Late Neanderthal Subsistence at Lapa do Picareiro (Portugal): A Zooarchaeological and Taphonomic Study

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Identifying variability in Neanderthal behavior through time during the Late Pleistocene is critical for understanding the processes which culminated in the disappearance of Neanderthals on local and regional scales. One region, Portuguese Estremadura (central Portugal), has a growing Middle Paleolithic archaeological record with several key sites demonstrating the ecological plasticity of Neanderthals in their hunting strategies. Neanderthals in this region, seemingly gone by ~42ka cal BP, exploited both sessile and fast-moving small prey such as rabbits and tortoises, consumed marine resources like mollusks, crabs, fish, seals and dolphins, and targeted various medium to large sized ungulates like red deer, ibex, aurochs, horses and roe deer. Lapa do Picareiro is ideally suited to study Neanderthal subsistence behaviors through time due to its large zooarchaeological assemblages corresponding to several Middle Paleolithic occupations. Preliminary analyses suggest both anthropic and non-anthropic contributions to these assemblages. Here, we present the results of a zooarchaeological and taphonomic investigation of levels MM, KK and JJ, focusing on identifying the depositional agents responsible for the osseous accumulations, assessing whether Neanderthal subsistence behaviors varied or demonstrate continuity through time, and use available site-based and nearby paleoclimatic proxy records to contextualize their hunting decisions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53044