Abric Romaní

General view of the site

The Abric Romaní also Abric Romaní de Capellades , is an archaeological site in Capellades in the Comarca Anoia in the Spanish region of Catalonia .

description

The Abri Romaní is a deposit of 17 meters thick under a rock overhang, in which so far (2011) 27 superimposed layers with archaeological finds have been exposed. The oldest date from the Middle Paleolithic , the time of the Neanderthals . Their age is estimated to be around 56,000 years ago.

Discovery and excavation

The Abric Romaní was discovered in 1909 by Amador Romaní 60 meters above the current level of the Anoia River at 350 meters above sea level. Before the Spanish Civil War , the excavations were carried out by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans under Norbert Font i Sagué and Lluís Maria Vidal . From the 1950s onwards, Eduard Ripoll and Henry de Lumley worked for 15 years . From 1983 the Department of Prehistory of the University of Rovira i Virgili took over this task.

Find situation and finds

In the Abric Romaní remains of wood have been covered by flooding with debris and mud and very calcareous water. The water, which is very rich in calcium carbonate , led to the formation of a layer of travertine that preserved the wood up to our days. The find situation is unique in the world.

The more than one hundred pieces of wood and around 300 figures found so far allow an insight into the way in which the Neanderthals worked and lived with wood. Using a negative of a five-meter-long wooden beam measuring 6 × 3 cm, the age of the traces of settlement was determined to be more than 55,000 years ago.

Finds made of wood in recent years bear witness to the first manufacture of tools such as shovels and knives. These objects, around 50,000 years old, were found by the Catalan Institute for Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) under the direction of Eudald Carbonell and published in the Spanish newspaper Público .

Numerous fireplaces were also found.

literature

• Eudald Carbonell, A. Cebriá, M. Aïmene, E. Allué, I. Caceres, I. Pastó, J. Prats, P. Saladiéa, J. Vallerdú and M. Vaquero: Occupational Strategies in Level I from Abric Romaní Middle Paleolithic Site (Barcelona, ​​Spain) in: The First Human and their Cultural Manifestation - Lower Middle Paleolithic - The Upper Paleolithic . Fiorenzo Facchini, et al. (Eds.). ABACO, XV. Forli, Italy, 1996, UISSP Congrès. 2. pp. 371-376. (English)
• Eudald Carbonell / Z. Castro Cural: Wood Pseudomorphs from Level I at Abric Romaní, Barcelona, ​​Spain. in: Journal of Field Archeology 22 . 1995, pp 376-384. (English)
• Eudald Carbonell, S. Giralt and M. Vaquero: Abric Romaní (Capellades, Barcelone, Espagne): Une importante séquence anthropisée du Pleistocène Superieur. Bulletin de la Société préhistorique francaise, 91 . 1994. pp 47-55. (French)

Web links

Commons : Abric Romaní de Capellades  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Abric Romaní. On: iphes.cat (website of the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social )
• Illustration of the Abric Romaní from 1909/10 ( Memento from October 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
• TV broadcast in the Catalan 3rd TV program TV3 from August 16, 2010 (approx.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Smarter than I thought. In: FAZ of August 26, 2011, p. 34
2. ↑ Michael Balter: Better Homes and Hearths, Neandertal Style. In: Science . Volume 326, No. 5956, 2009, pp. 1056-1057, DOI: 10.1126 / science.326.5956.1056