Connecting areas: Faunal refits as a diagnostic element to identify synchronicity in the Abric Romaní archaeological assemblages.

Abstract

The anthropogenic accumulations at the sites are often the product of overlapped activities and/or occupations that also involve disruptive processes such as cleaning, transport or even trampling. The results are palimpsest with a disordered appearance that can confuse the interpretations of the spatial organization of human groups. In this regard, the Abric Romaní site (Capellades, Spain) can provide significant data to interpret these questions. This site, dated in MIS 3, is composed by a sequence of travertine platforms, which are more than 20 m high. The human occupations are located between these platforms, which are isolated from each other. This fact, in addition to a high rate of identified sedimentation, allows analyzing the archaeological accumulations more accurately. The current excavations (approx. 300 m2) have documented several different kinds of anthropogenic assemblages, which go from very simple to complex human occupations. In this study, we present faunal data from Level H and Level Ja. Both levels show the same processing patterns on animal resources, but a different spatial distribution of the faunal remains. Level H presents short distance refits that suggest the presence of isolated activity areas without temporal relationships between them. In contrast, Level Ja shows several long distance refits that connect two or more activity areas. The observed differences between both levels could be explained from dissimilar human occupational patterns: presence of small groups with reduced use of the space at Level H and occupations composed by large groups with important spatial requirements at Level Ja. From this perspective, the aim of this paper is to provide criteria from faunal refits to understand the diversity of human occupations at Abric Romaní. This fact shows the importance of these studies to understand the diversity of occupational patterns and ways of life of the human communities of the European Middle Palaeolithic.