A Window into 40,000 Years of the Prehistory of Iberia: The Long Excavation of El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain

Abstract

Since 1996, the El Mirón Cave Prehistoric Project in Cantabria, Spain, has been uncovering and studying an ever-increasing variety of finds. These range from “classic” ones such as artifacts, works of portable art, and faunal remains to unique ones—notably a Magdalenian-age human burial—to very novel ancient DNA discoveries in a long stratigraphic sequence spanning from the Mousterian through the Bronze Age, dated by 102 14C assays between >46,000–3,500 years ago. This article summarizes for the first time the principal Paleolithic and post-Paleolithic results of this long-term research project in the regional context of northern Atlantic Iberia and provides references to many of its most significant publications for detailed consultation. The excavation of this major habitation site as a key, “persistent” place (sensu Sarah Schlanger) in the landscape of the classic Cantabrian region is a good example of durable, successful, international, interdisciplinary collaboration. This has involved a working division of labor between project directors with different skills, specific interests and backgrounds, but a common dedication to an archeology that combines social, geological and biological science foci with a humanistic approach to understanding past human adaptations and lifeways as they evolved over the course of the late Upper Pleistocene through the mid-Holocene: a very long duration history.