Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans in Western Iberia: Diet and Ecology at Lapa do Picareiro (Central Portugal)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on the Paleolithic in the Mediterranean Region" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In Iberia, potentially the last place where Neanderthals survived, the demographic breakdown of small, loosely connected populations seems to have been a significant driver for their demise. Human responses to the climatic fluctuations of the Late Pleistocene, particularly Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3, could be an explanation for the decreases in Neanderthal population size during this time; it may be that habitat fragmentation and environmental instability contributed to a demographic breakdown, resulting in small, secluded Neanderthal populations that remained for some time in refugia, even after the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe some 40,000 years ago. Thus, understanding human responses to climate change during the Middle–Upper Paleolithic Transition is critical. In this paper, we present new zooarchaeological and stable isotopic data from levels JJ and GG at Lapa do Picareiro, one of a handful of sites on the Iberian Peninsula with end-dates for the Middle Paleolithic (~45–42 ka cal BP), and a rare early Aurignacian occupation (~41.1–38.1 ka cal BP), to reconstruct Neanderthal and early modern human diet and ecology. We then compare our results to what is known about Neanderthals and early modern humans in the Mediterranean region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recent Research on the Paleolithic in the Mediterranean Region   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37653.0