Santimamiñe q i xxx (2013)

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Quaternary International xxx (2013) 1e14

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The long paleoenvironmental sequence of Santimamiñe (Bizkaia, Spain): 20,000 years of small mammal record from the latest Late Pleistocene to the middle Holocene Juan Rofes a, *, Xabier Murelaga a, Blanca Martínez-García a, Salvador Bailon b, Juan Carlos López-Quintana c, Amagoia Guenaga-Lizasu c, Luis Ángel Ortega d, María Cruz Zuluaga d, Ainhoa Alonso-Olazabal d, Jone Castaños a, Pedro Castaños e a Universidad del País Vasco UPV-EHU, Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología, Departamento de Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Apartado 644, E-48080 Bilbao, Spain b UMR 7209-UMR 7149, CNRS Département Ecologie et Gestion de la Biodiversité (EGB), MNHN Bâtiment d’Anatomie Comparée CP55, 55 rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France c AGIRI Arkeologia Kultura Elkartea, 208 Postakutxa, 48300 Gernika-Lumo, Spain d Universidad de País Vasco UPV-EHU, Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología, Departamento de Mineralogía y Petrología, Apartado 644, E-48080 Bilbao, Spain e Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi, Zorroagagaina 11, 20014 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Available online xxx

The cave of Santimamiñe (Kortezubi, Bizkaia, Spain), on the southern slopes of the Ereñozar Mountain (Urdaibai biosphere reserve), is one of the most famous prehistoric localities of the Cantabrian range. Between 2004 and 2006, a test trench revealed a 6 m-deep stratigraphic sequence in the inner vestibule of the cave covering w20,000 years, from the latest Late Pleistocene (MIS 2) to the middle Holocene (MIS 1). It comprises six chrono-cultural units: lower, middle and upper Magdalenian, Azilian, Neolithic, and Chalcolithic/Bronze Age, plus seven lower purely palaeontological levels. More than 47,000 microvertebrate elements (including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fishes) were recovered, of which 1587 were identified to the genus and/or species levels. Of these, small mammals were used for paleoenvironmental reconstruction since they are very sensitive to climatic conditions and their distributions over time, measured in terms of relative abundance, serve as reliable proxies of habitat and climatic change. The reconstruction of Santimamiñe past environments based on small mammals roughly coincides with other proxies, such as the amphibian/reptile, large mammal/bird, palynological, and cryoclastic records on the local scale; other paleoenvironmental reconstructions from north Iberia on the regional scale; and the oxygen isotopic curve of an ice core from central Greenland on the global scale. All Magdalenian levels from Santimamiñe were deposited during the Oldest Dryas, a mostly cold and humid period including the Heinrich event 1. Small mammalian, palynological and cryoclastic evidence likely document the shift from the cold Younger Dryas to the beginning of the Holocene Climatic Optimum during Azilian times. The uppermost level, deposited during a moderate re-opening of the landscape at the Subboreal, slightly postdates the Holocene Cooling Event 3. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

first cave paintings of the Basque Country were discovered by F. J. Bengoechea and other Gernika villagers in 1916 (FernándezEraso, 2011). Next year, H. Breuil discovered some new engravings and defined the main graphic units of the complex (LópezQuintana and Guenaga-Lizasu, 2011). The systematic excavation of Santimamiñe was the first one organized by a multidisciplinary team in the Basque Country, being conducted between 1918 and 1926 by the well-known archaeologists T. de Aranzadi, J. M. de Barandiarán and E. de Eguren (Aranzadi et al., 1925, 1931; Aranzadi

The cave of Santimamiñe (Kortezubi, Bizkaia) is one of the most famous prehistoric localities of the Cantabrian range, where the

* Corresponding author. Universidad del País Vasco UPV-EHU, Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología, Departamento de Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Sarriena s/n, 48940 Leioa, Bizkaia, Spain. E-mail address: juan.rofes@ehu.es (J. Rofes). 1040-6182/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2013.05.048

Please cite this article in press as: Rofes, J., et al., The long paleoenvironmental sequence of Santimamiñe (Bizkaia, Spain): 20,000 years of small mammal record from the latest Late Pleistocene to the middle Holocene, Quaternary International (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2013.05.048


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