Reconstructing Climate and Environment in Paleolithic Western Iberia: A Stable Isotopic Study of Organic Remains at Lapa do Picareiro

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Research into the Late Pleistocene of Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Portuguese Estremadura (central Portugal), is an understudied region in Paleolithic research with several key Middle and Upper Paleolithic sites that have provided important information on human lifeways in westernmost Europe during the Late Pleistocene. One of these is Lapa do Picareiro, a rare type of site on the Iberian Peninsula, with end-dates for the Middle Paleolithic (~45-42ka cal BP) and Upper Paleolithic deposits containing evidence of early Aurignacian (~41-38ka cal BP), Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdalenian occupations. Picareiro offers the opportunity to assess Neanderthal and modern human paleoecology in a stratified and well-dated site with a growing number of paleoenvironmental records. Here, we present new stable isotopic data (carbon and oxygen) derived from organic materials associated with Middle and Upper Paleolithic deposits of Picareiro, elaborating on one of a handful of existing zooarchaeologically-based stable isotope environmental records in Paleolithic Portugal. We reconstruct the ecology of Paleolithic humans using these data and combine this with the results of existing environmental records obtained from organic and sedimentary sources at the site.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Interdisciplinary Research into the Late Pleistocene of Europe   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40242.0