The archaeological cave site of El Mirón is located in the Rio Ason valley of eastern Cantabria, Spain. the cave opening is about 260 meters above sea level, and the cave opening is currently about 30 meters deep by 8-16 meters wide and 13 meters high. El Mirón is remarkable for its long occupation history and thus for its long unbroken sequence of history and prehistory of Cantabria, Spain.
The site includes human occupations between the Middle Paleolithic (ca 41,000 years ago) to AD 1400, including Mousterian, Early Upper Paleolithic, Solutrean, Magdalenian, Azilian, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age deposits.
Neolithic at El Miron
The intensive Neolithic occupation includes a series of levels, and the presence of charred wheat grains representing emmer, einkorn and durum wheat at dates of 5550 +/-40 BP. Also in the assemblage are domestic sheep, goats, cattle and pigs, and some wild red deer.
The Early Magdalenian at El Miron
The Upper Paleolithic Magdalenian levels date between ~17,000—13,000 BP, and are characterized by dense deposits of animal bones, stone and bone tools, ochre and fire cracked rock. Animals found in the levels include ibex, red deer and fish bones, as well as perforated marine shell beads.
Recent studies of the Upper Paleolithic period at El Miron (ca. 15,500 RCYBP), shows evidence of a hearth and possible evidence of stone boiling—an important method of grease rendering used by hunter-gatherers.
The evidence of grease-rendering is an abundance of highly fragmented fire-cracked rock—the fragmentation a result of frequent reuse—, in association with fragmented animal bones, and hammerstones with anvils in shallow basin hearths.
The site has been excavated since the mid-1990s by the El Mirón Prehistoric Project, led by Lawrence Guy Straus and Manuel González Morales.
Sources
Nakazawa, Yuichi, et al. 2009 On stone-boiling technology in the Upper Paleolithic behavioral implications from an Early Magdalenian hearth in El Mirón Cave, Cantabria, Spain. Journal of Archaeological Science 36(3):684-693.
Peña-Chocarro, Leonor, et al. 2005 The oldest agriculture in northern Atlantic Spain: new evidence from El Mirón Cave (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria). Journal of Archaeological Science 32(5):579-587.
Straus, L. G. Straus, M. González Morales, W. R. Farrand, and W. J. Hubbard. 2001. Sedimentological and stratigraphic observations in El Mirón, a late Quaternary cave site in the Cantabrian Cordillera, Northern Spain. Geoarchaeology 16:603-630.
Straus, L.G. 2005 The Upper Paleolithic of Cantabrian Spain. Evolutionary Anthropology 14(4):145-158.
Straus, L.G. 2006 Of stones and bones: Interpreting site function in the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic of Western Europe. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 25:500-509.
