Isotopes and Environments: Exploring Palaeoenvironmental Change during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic in the Cantabrian Region, Northern Spain

Summary

The Cantabrian region Northern Spain was an archaeologically important region throughout the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, and was home to some of the last surviving Neanderthals in Europe, and during the Last Glacial Maximum the region acted as a refugium for plants, animals and humans. Changes in the environment are thought to have been driving factors behind the extinction of the Neanderthals, the rise of Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs), and later the development of the rich cave art assemblages. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis of hunted animal bone collagen from Palaeolithic levels of archaeological sites can be used to understand past environments at this time. Changes in the environment including factors such as temperature, aridity produce different isotopic signatures within plants, and the animals that consume them, and analysis of these specimens on a large scale. This research uses large scale isotopic analysis of analysis of animal bones, before making comparisons to existing zooarchaeological assemblages, to characterise how the environment changed, and human responses to these environmental changes throughout the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic in this archaeologically important region, at this crucial time in human evolution.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Applications of Isotope Research in Zooarchaeology

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