Torralba and Ambrona

About

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). The sites, traditionally studied together, are about 3 km distant, and belong to the settlements of Ambrona (municipality of Miño de Medinaceli) and Torralba del Moral (municipality of Medinaceli). From these sites have been obtained fossils of large mammals, mainly elephants (Straight-tusked elephant), with remains of nearly fifty individuals from each site, in addition to large bovines and horses. The sites can be seen as an elephants' graveyard, although the use of the term for a concentration of bones raises a problem of definition. The sites show evidence of successive occupations by human beings, who had a hunting station or, more likely, scavanged carrion and carried out quartering. Known since the end of the 19th century, they were excavated first by the Marquis of Cerralbo between 1909 and 1914, later, in the early '60s and early '80s, by the American Francis Clark Howell with the collaboration...

In the late 19th century it was decided that a new railway line should link Torralba and Soria. The contract was awarded to a Belgian company. The first remains appeared in 1888, with the works of canalization of the water that the company was carrying out for the first railway station of Torralba (moved later twice, before 1926 and in 1959). Part of that material was acquired by the Escuela Superior de Minas de Madrid and the rest distributed among individuals.

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. His study, scientific and methodical, will continue without rest. 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, and have been considered as the best performed of the first half of the 20th century.

In 1907, 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. He initiated them in 1909 – a year after taking office as Permanent Academician of the Real Academia de la Historia – and established his paleontological workshop in Santa María de Huerta, a relatively close location where he owned an estate.

Cerralbo excavated between 1000 and 2000 m 2 of the Torralba site and an unknown, but much smaller, area of Ambrona. 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 ), and the lithic industry accounted for a total of 557 specimens, including hand axes, cleavers, flakes, cores and Chopping tools.

Cerralbo was accompanied in his excavations by the archaeologist Juan Cabré, the geologist Pedro Palacios and the French paleontologist Édouard Harlé.

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, 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-, in which he describe the findings of Torralba, originally published in Spanish in 1916, with a second edition expanded in 1925 that was translated into English.

The American anthropologist Francis Clark Howell conducted six excavation campaigns in Torralba and Ambrona, between 1961 and 1963 and in 1980, 1981 and 1983. The results of his studies seemed to have demonstrated the practice of active hunting by the human groups of the time-hypothesis discussed later, in favor of occasional scavenging. Also carbonaceous remains to indicate the presence of homes: the intentional and controlled use of fire.

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.

Howell visited Ambrona and Torralba in 1960. He obtained funding and permits to excavate, helped by Biberson, who was also able to provide some funding for the work. An international multidisciplinary team and a modern work methodology were proposed.

In the different campaigns from 1961 to 1963 they were part of Howell's teams: Pierre Biberson (Museum of the Man of Paris, deputy director of the excavations and head of the Ambrona area), Emiliano Aguirre ( Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, paleontology of vertebrates), Dolores Echaide (University of Zaragoza, representative in 1961 of the Dirección General de Bellas Artes), Francisco Jordá Cerdá (professor at the University of Salamanca, delegate of Fine Arts in 1962–63), Desmond Collins (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom), Peter Taylor, Richard G. Klein, Blanca Izquierdo, José Viloria (MNCN, preparation and restoration of fossils), Karl W. Butzer (University of Wisconsin, edaphology and geology ), Josefina Menéndez Amor (MNCN) and F. Florschutz ( palynology and paleobotany, Leslie Gordon Freeman (University of Chicago, record), Thomas Lynch (University of Chicago), Susan Tax (cartoonist), several Spanish and American students denses and more than twenty workers in the area.

Grids were drawn, stratigraphic profiles were raised and each extracted remainder was labeled. As an example of thoroughness, samples of pollen were taken from the clay adhered between the teeth of the elephants, to get as close as possible to the existing environment during the accumulation of the remains.

In 1973 Aguirre directed the systematic excavation of more than 200 m 2 around the Museum of Ambrona, built ten years earlier, necessary to correct the humidity that endangered it, recovering more fossils and lithic industry.

The last campaigns of Howel were realized in 1980, 1981 and 1983. The possibility of finding some human fossil facilitated new economic supports, even of the National Geographic Society. 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.

In all its campaigns, Howell excavated more than 1000 m 2 in Torralba, recovering about 700 lithic instruments and more than 2100 fossils, and about 2700 m 2 in Ambrona, with more than 4400 lithic instruments and several thousand fossils (of them more of 2000 elephants).

The investigations of these years gave rise to a large number of scientific publications on all related aspects, paleontology, archeology, geology, paleoclimatology, etc., but highlighting, due to its social impact, those related to the presumed hunting activities of primitive man.

As a result of the results of Howell and collaborators, in the following years, extensive discussions took place on some conclusions related to human behavior, mainly those related to active hunting or the use of bone instruments. In order to establish a precise formation model of the deposits, the archaeologist Manuel Santonja and the geologist Alfredo Pérez-González proposed and co-directed a new stage of excavations, focused mainly to establish with precision the geology and the detailed stratigraphy of the same. The approach was based on the realization, prior to the systematic excavation, of trial pits and sections for detailed stratigraphic analysis, since simultaneous excavation in large areas could lead to confusion among very similar facies, mixing levels that should be differentiated with this other method. 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.

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 excavations were carried out by a large number of archeology students, reaching over fifty in one of the campaigns.

In Ambrona a total of 688 m 2 were excavated and some surveys and control tastings were carried out in Torralba. Some 975 lithic industry specimens were obtained, however, most paleontological remains were left unexploded, consolidated, covered again and protected to prevent spoilage and looting, in anticipation of a possible future extension of the museum exhibition in situ to a much larger extension of the site.