Torralba and Ambrona (archaeological site)

Torralba and Ambrona (Province of Soria, Castile and León, Spain) are two paleontological and archaeological sites that correspond to various fossiliferous levels with Acheulean lithic industry (Lower Paleolithic) associated, at least about 350,000 years old (Ionian, Middle Pleistocene).

[5][6] The Torralba site is infinitely precious for Spanish prehistory and it is a joy that is in the hands of someone so enlightened and with such powerful means of action as the Marquis of Cerralbo.

He could discover the skeletons of some elephant hunters!The first excavations were carried out by Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa, Marquis of Cerralbo, first in Torralba from 1909 to 1913 and later in Ambrona from 1914 to 1916,[4] and have been considered as the best performed of the first half of the 20th century.

[8] In 1907,[4] when the Marquis of Cerralbo vacationed in the area, he had news of the appearance of "colossal" elephant carcasses; after visiting the place and aware, from the beginning, of the antiquity of the remains, he decided to undertake and pay for the excavations himself, hoping to find evidence of its synchrony with the "most primitive" man.

Paleontological elements recovered accounted for 525 elephant remains (Straight-tusked elephant), 86 horse (Equus caballus torralbae), 37 of a great bovid (Aurochs), 25 deer (Cervus elaphus) and 3 rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus hemitoechus),[8] and the lithic industry accounted for a total of 557 specimens, including hand axes, cleavers, flakes, cores and Chopping tools.

[9] The international diffusion of the works in Torralba was due, on the one hand, to the communication that Marquis of Cerralbo himself presented at the International Congress of Prehistory that was held in Geneva in 1912, which he accompanied with a sample of his discoveries,[9] and, on the other hand, to the book by the German paleontologist Hugo Obermaier, The fossil man -reference work during the first third of the 20th century-,[4] in which he describe the findings of Torralba, originally published in Spanish in 1916, with a second edition expanded in 1925[3] that was translated into English.

In 1959, during the Pan-African Congress of Prehistory and Quaternary Studies, in which John Desmond Clark was presenting the concept of "occupation sites", the Spanish archaeologist Lluís Pericot (University of Barcelona) interested the anthropologists F. Clark Howell (University of Chicago) and Pierre Biberson (Museum of the Man of Paris), in the works that the Marquis of Cerralbo had done in Torralba and his concept of "station", very similar to the one they were discussing.

[8] In 1973 Aguirre directed the systematic excavation of more than 200 m2 around the Museum of Ambrona, built ten years earlier, necessary to correct the humidity that endangered it, recovering more fossils and lithic industry.

For the excavations and analysis of samples of these campaigns, he had the following team: co-directors: Leslie Gordon Freeman (lithic industry) and Martín Almagro Basch (director of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España); researchers: Emiliano Aguirre, Karl W. Butzer, Richard G. Klein, M. Teresa Alberdi, A. Azzaroli, J. Bischoff, T. E. Cerling, Katherine Cruz-Uribe, Ignacio Doadrio, Frank Harrold, Manuel Hoyos, P. Preece, Antonio Sánchez-Marco (birds), F. Borja Sanchiz (amphibians), H. P. Schwarcz, Carmen Sesé (micromammals), Kathy Schick, N. P. Toth and Charles Turner.

The works began in the years 1990 and 1991, with the elaboration of surface geological studies complemented with some soundings, and the main excavation campaigns were carried out, this time only in Ambrona, the summers from 1993 to 2000, without interruption, taking place some complementary sampling and other trials between 2001 and 2002.

[14] The team had numerous specialists: Carmen Sesé and Enrique Soto (mammals), Paola Villa (taphonomy), Blanca Ruiz Zapata (palynology), Rafael Mora (area of Torralba, registry and cartography), Josep María Parés (paleomagnetism), Ángel Baltanás (ostracods), Ignacio Doadrio (fishes), Ascensión Pinilla (phytoliths), Borja Sanchiz (amphibians and reptiles), Antonio Sánchez Marco (birds), Juan M. Rodríguez de Tembleque, Joaquín Panera and Susana Rubio (archeology), Christophe Falguères (dating), Alfonso Benito Calvo (geology), C. Álvaro Chirveches, M. Vilà Margalef and Alexandra Vicent (consolidation and restoration).

The rest of the lower and middle members (AS4 to AS6) are interpreted as deposited in low-energy shallow fluvial-lacustrine environments, with some sediments of channel and overflow.

The upper member (AS7), with a granulometry higher than the previous ones, corresponds again to alluvial fan facies, in which neither fossils nor lithic industry have been found.

[19] The studies of paleomagnetism have given in all Ambrona samples a normal polarity value, consistent with the cron Brunhes, the current one, which started 779 000 years ago .

[20] The lists of taxa identified in the deposits have been changing over time, depending on the discovery of better diagnostic elements or the vagaries of the systematic; we try to present the most up-to-date relation.

[10][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] The vegetation, identified by the pollen at different levels, shows the evolution of the paleoenvironment during the sedimentation of the same, which in general corresponds to fluvio-lacustrine media under a temperate climate, softer and more humid than the current one.

The AS6 level is characterized by the almost exclusive domain of the pine forests, but on the roof, the return of the moorlands is finally reflected with junipers and grasses (Poaceae).

brecciensis, which in Ambrona presents some primitive characters, as does Palaeoloxodon antiquus and Bos primigenius, prior to populations recorded in late-Middle Pleistocene sites.

Other sites, with a similar faunal association of mammals or the evolutionary status of the significant species, are those of Áridos (Arganda del Rey) and some terraces of the Manzanares River (Madrid), Pinedo (Toledo), El Higuerón (Rincón de la Victoria, Province of Málaga) or Solana del Zamborino (Fonelas, Province of Granada).

[27] From the excavations of Howell in Ambrona, the alignment of a defense and five long elephant bones of difficult interpretation have been described and in which it has been wanted to see, without any justification, some type of ritual.

[5] Likewise, Aguirre interprets the tips of ivory of defenses as possible soft hammerstones, selected and purposely prepared by man for use in lithic carving.

Ten years later Aguirre obtained, in addition, that a road was made that facilitated a route of cultural tourism between the Nacional II, the museum and Sigüenza.