Research
Lawrence Guy Straus, Manuel R. Gonz´alez Morales & Jose Miguel Carretero
Figure 5. The narrow space between the rear wall of the vestibule (left) and the edge of the fallen bock (right), in which the human burial was originally interred (Level 504). Both stone faces had been stained with ochre (photograph: Lawrence Straus).
crystal is unusual enough and physically so close to several human bones as to be highly probable). Osseous artefacts found in X7, Level 504, include a perforated incisor (ibex?), a possible double-bevel base of a quadrangular-section sagaie with oblique engraved lines on both faces, an undecorated distal tip of a round-section sagaie, a distal tip of another round-section sagaie with a longitudinal engraved line crossed by two sets of oblique engraved lines on one face, a mesial fragment of an oval section sagaie with a 3mm-wide longitudinal groove (probably for bladelet slotting) on one face, a long mesial fragment of a sub-quadrangular section needle and a possible distal tip fragment of a lenticular section needle. Lithic artefacts from Level 504 in X7 include about 3000 items of chipping debris (mostly flakes, bladelets, plus several cores, all generally made of high-quality flint) plus 46 formal, retouched tools. These include three endscrapers (one of which is a nucleiform endscraper), three perforators, three notches/denticulates, a triangle and a circle segment (geometric microliths often found in small numbers in the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian, including at El Mir´on), and 26 backed bladelets (or small blades). Level 503.1 yielded 33 tools, 20 of which are backed bladelets/small blades. Level 503 (from X7C and D only, where this unit is less clearly a mixed 504 than in X7A and B) has only 15 tools, six of which are backed 1159