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The first arrivals of hominin populations into Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene are currently considered to have occurred as short and poorly dated biological dispersions. Questions as to the tempo and mode of these early prehistoric settlements have given rise to debates concerning the taxonomic significance of the lithic assemblages, as trace fossils, and the geographical distribution of the technological traditions found in the Lower Palaeolithic record. Here, we report on the Barranc de la Boella site which has yielded a lithic assemblage dating to ∼1 million years ago that includes large cutting tools (LCT). We argue that distinct technological traditions coexisted in the Iberian archaeological repertoires of the late Early Pleistocene age in a similar way to the earliest sub-Saharan African artefact assemblages. These differences between stone tool assemblages may be attributed to the different chronologies of hominin dispersal events. The archaeological record of Barranc de la Boella completes the geographical distribution of LCT assemblages across southern Eurasia during the EMPT (Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition, circa 942 to 641 kyr). Up to now, chronology of the earliest European LCT assemblages is based on the abundant Palaeolithic record found in terrace river sequences which have been dated to the end of the EMPT and later. However, the findings at Barranc de la Boella suggest that early LCT lithic assemblages appeared in the SW of Europe during earlier hominin dispersal episodes before the definitive colonization of temperate Eurasia took place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Heinrich Event 3 (H3) is well documented in the North Atlantic Ocean as a cooling event that occurred ca. 31 000 years ago. Deep-sea cores around the Iberian Peninsula coastline have been analysed to characterize the H3 event, but there are no data on the terrestrial response to this event. Here we present for the first time an analysis of terrestrial proxies for characterizing the H3 event, using the small-vertebrate assemblage (comprising small mammals, squamates and amphibians) from the Galls Carboners cave, an archaeo-palaeontological deposit located in the Prades mountain range in the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula. This assemblage shows the H3 event to be characterized in north-eastern Iberia by harsher and drier terrestrial conditions than today. Our results were compared with the small-vertebrate assemblage data recovered from present-day Strix aluco pellets available from this site, as well as with the general H3 event fluctuations and with other sites where the previous Heinrich events (H5 and H4) and subsequent Late Glacial Maximum have been detected in the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions of the Iberian Peninsula. Terrestrial proxies seem to follow the same climatic pattern as detected in the deep-sea cores at NorthGRIP and the Iberian margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cova dels Xaragalls is a small open karst system, located in the municipality of Vimbodí-Poblet ( Tarragona, Catalonia, NE Spain). It is an important Holocene archaeological site that was inspected in the 1970s but from which little has been published. New excavations starting in 2008 have exposed a deep Late Pleistocene stratigraphical sequence. In this paper, we present for the first time palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic reconstructions of this Late Pleistocene succession on the basis of both the small-vertebrate assemblages and the charcoals. Results from the small-vertebrate associations along the sequence indicate that the landscape had open-woodland habitats in the vicinity of the Cova del Xaragalls, with wet points in the surrounding area. Woodland habitats were dominant throughout the sequence, as evidenced by the abundance of the species Apodemus sylvaticus, but were better developed during warm periods (layers C5 and C8), whereas during cold periods (layers C4 and C3) the environment was slightly more humid in response to higher mean annual precipitation and the opening of the landscape. The charcoal analysis indicates that the woodland surrounding the cave was composed mainly of Pinus (more than 90% was identified as Pinus), but that during the cold period ( C3- C4) it incorporated some Quercus ilex/ coccifera and Angiosperm indet., probably linked with greater precipitation. Comparisons are made with other long palaeoenvironmental sequences from the northeastern Iberian Peninsula and with global marine isotopic curves, providing a scenario for the palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental changes that occurred during the Late Pleistocene in the woodland areas surrounding the Cova dels Xaragalls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]