Dancing to the rhythms of the Pleistocene? Early Middle Paleolithic population dynamics in NW Iberia (Duero Basin and Cantabrian Region)

作者：Sanchez Yustos Policarpo; Diez Martin Fernando

来源：Quaternary Science Reviews, 2015, 121: 75-88.

DOI：10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.05.005

• Middle Paleolithic
• Mousterian
• Iberia
• Duero Basin
• Cantabrian Region
• Population dynamics

The Northwest of Iberia has yielded one of the most complete European Middle Paleolithic records. Despite this wealth of information, very little is known about population dynamics during this period. For that reason, the main concern of this paper is to provide socio-environmental models that may help explain Early Middle Paleolithic (EMP) population dynamics in NW Iberia, assessing to what extent they were shaped by climate forces. The archaeological record is analyzed on the basis of the heuristics of ecological models, already employed in the European Pleistocene record but never at a regional scale, in order to detect long-term changes in the composition of EMP populations, and the environmental, biological and sociocultural process influencing those changes. According to the models proposed, we have detected a long-term population dynamic between MIS 11 and MIS 6, characterized by low environmental stress, high biological productivity, interaction among populations and sociocultural complexity. Eventually, this population dynamic was broken due to an extreme climate phase in late MIS 6 that had a profound impact on populations and sociocultural structures. As a result, the Upper Pleistocene population of NW Iberia was concentrated in the Cantabrian region. This area became an isolated Neanderthal glacial refugium that hosted a population with different origins and fragile long-term demographic stability.

• 出版日期2015-8-1