Spatial analysis of original excavation data: The Middle Pleistocene localities of Ambrona and Torralba (Spain).

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Elephant Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The classic Middle Pleistocene localities of Ambrona and Torralba have been the center of multiple debates about Pleistocene behaviors, environments, and evolution. These two occurrences yielded numerous elephant bones and lithic artifacts, leading to its first interpretation as an elephant kill site, and provoking subsequent studies and debates about that interpretation.

Torralba and Ambrona were first excavated at the beginning of the 20th Century by the Marqués de Cerralbo. After Cerralbo, these localities were excavated by a multidisciplinary team led by the American paleoanthropologist Prof. F. Clark Howell between the 1960s and 1980s. This work generated a large body of documentation, including maps, photographs, catalogs, drawings, and notes. The interpretation of these localities was based on 1) that both localities were considered “twins” and 2) hominids were seen as the main agents of accumulation and modification of bones.

Recent years of research have demonstrated that these localities are not “twins” and, thanks to the work withstratigraphic sections and georeferenced and digitalized distribution maps of bones and stones, the formation and accumulation processes of stones and bones have been unveiled.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Elephant Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50927