Abstract
During the Last Glacial Period, rapidly changing environments posed substantial challenges to Neanderthal populations in Europe. Southern continental regions, such as Iberia, have been proposed as important climatic ‘buffer’ zones during glacial phases. Contextualising the climatic and ecological conditions Neanderthals faced is relevant to interpreting their resilience. However, records of the environments and ecosystems they exploited across Iberia exhibit temporal and spatial gaps in coverage. Here we provide new evidence for palaeotemperatures, vegetation structure, and prey herbivore ecology during the Late Pleistocene (MIS 5 – 3) in northern Spain, by applying multiple stable isotope tracers (𝛿18O, 𝛿 13C, 𝛿 15N, 𝛿 34S) to herbivore skeletal remains associated with Neanderthal occupations at Axlor Cave, Bizkaia. The results show little change over time and indicate stable climatic conditions and ecosystems across different occupations. Large within-layer isotopic variability
in nitrogen and sulphur suggests the presence of a mosaic environment and a variety of isotopic ecotones were exploited by Neanderthals and their prey. We implement a combination of carbonate and phosphate 𝛿 18O measurements to estimate palaeotemperatures using a cost-effective workflow. We show that the targeted use of phosphate 𝛿 18O measurements to anchor summer peak and winter trough areas enables high precision seasonal palaeoclimatic reconstructions.
in nitrogen and sulphur suggests the presence of a mosaic environment and a variety of isotopic ecotones were exploited by Neanderthals and their prey. We implement a combination of carbonate and phosphate 𝛿 18O measurements to estimate palaeotemperatures using a cost-effective workflow. We show that the targeted use of phosphate 𝛿 18O measurements to anchor summer peak and winter trough areas enables high precision seasonal palaeoclimatic reconstructions.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 108-132 |
Number of pages | 25 |
Journal | Quaternary Research |
Volume | 116 |
Early online date | 17 Jul 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2023 |
Bibliographical note
The carbon, nitrogen and sulphur stable isotope analyses and the stable isotope analyses of bioapatite carbonates were funded as part of the ABRUPT project (HAR2017-84997-P) funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the SUBSILIENCE project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 818299—ERC-2018-Consolidator), both awarded to ABM-A. SP was supported by the Max Planck Society and the University of Aberdeen during the time of this project, and the oxygen isotope analysis of bioapatite phosphates was funded by the Max Planck Society. Access to the archaeological collections was granted by the Museo de Arqueología de Bizkaia (Basque Government), and initial sampling for carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis was achieved by Hazel Reade funded by the FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG- 322112 project) and ABM-A. We appreciate Joseba Rios-Garaizar's advice about Axlor stratigraphy during the sampling process. We thank Ignacio Valera (IBBTEC, University of Cantabria) for kindly allowing the use of his laboratory facilities for collagen extraction. We thank Carlos Revilla Gómez (IBBTEC, University of Cantabria) for laboratory assistance during collagen extraction. Thanks are also due to Manuel Trost (MPI-EVA) for assistance during silver phosphate preparation and to Sven Steinbrenner for assistance with TC/EA-IRMS. KB is supported by a Philip Leverhulme Prize from the Leverhulme Trust (PLP-2019-284).Data Availability Statement
Data availabilityDatasets are available on GitHub (https://github.com/ERCSubsilience/Axlor_paleoclimatic_data).
Code availability
The R codes used to perform all of the analyses reported in this manuscript are available on GitHub (https://github.com/ERC-ubsilience/Axlor_paleoclimatic_data).
Keywords
- Middle Palaeolithic
- MIS 3
- archaeozoology
- Cantabria
- Palaeoclimatology
- Palaeoecology
- tooth enamel
- bone collagen