Cueva de El Mirón

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Inside the cave (June 2010)
Striation-engraved deer scapula from El Mirón cave.

The Cueva de El Mirón (also: la Cueva del Mirón; Spanish for 'Cave of El Mirón') is an archaeological and paleoanthropological site about 120 meters deep in the east of the Spanish autonomous community of Cantabria , about one kilometer from the border with the province of Bizkaia . The cave is 260 meters above sea level in the area of ​​the market town of Ramales de la Victoria , above the Gándara River in the Cantabrian Mountains . The cave was washed out of karst limestone from the Lower Cretaceous . Its entrance is around 13 meters high and up to 16 meters wide and can therefore be seen from afar from the Gándara valley. The area around the cave entrance is a popular area for climbing with various climbing routes .

The cave has been speleologically explored since 1903 , but systematic excavation work has only been carried out since 1996. However, it was already known that the cave was inhabited at least temporarily from the Middle Ages until recently. In the course of several test excavations, numerous layers of different ages could be distinguished in the floor of the cave , which on the basis of artefacts (for example shards or stone tools ) reached from the Bronze Age to the Copper Age and the Mesolithic ; the oldest layer was dated on the basis of charcoal remains to an age of 41,280 ± 1120 years BP and thus to the late Moustérien .

The most important find so far is the so-called Dama Roja de El Mirón (the "Red Lady of El Mirón"). This is how the researchers describe the roughly 18,700-year-old skeleton of an alleged 35 to 40-year-old Cro-Magnon woman who was buried in the cave and whose body was decorated with red pigment. The find discovered in 2010 is also the oldest evidence of a burial in the Magdalenian era on the Iberian Peninsula . The name “Red Lady” is based on a similarly decorated, but almost twice as old find from South Wales , the Red Lady of Paviland .

literature

  • Lawrence Guy Straus and Manuel R. González Morales (Eds.): El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain: The Site and Its Holocene Archaeological Record. University of New Mexico Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0826351487
  • Manuel R. González Morales and Lawrence Guy Straus: La Cueva del Mirón (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria): Excavaciones 1996–1999. In: Trabajos de Prehistoria. Volume 57, No. 1, 2000, pp. 121-133, full text
  • Ana B. Marín-Arroyo and Jeanne Marie Geiling: Archeozoological study of the macromammal remains stratigraphically associated with the Magdalenian human burial in El Mirón Cave (Cantabria, Spain). In: Journal of Archaeological Science. Volume 60, 2015, pp. 75-83, doi: 10.1016 / j.jas.2015.03.009
  • Lisa M. Fontes, Lawrence Guy Straus, and Manuel R. González Morales: Lithic and osseous artifacts from the Lower Magdalenian human burial deposit in El Mirón cave, Cantabria, Spain. In: Journal of Archaeological Science. Volume 60, 2015, pp. 99–111, doi: 10.1016 / j.jas.2015.03.010

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chapter 3 in: Lawrence Guy Straus and Manuel R. González Morales (Eds.): El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain: The Site and Its Holocene Archaeological Record. University of New Mexico Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0826351487 , abstract
  2. ↑ Lawrence Guy Straus: El Mirón Cave and the 14C-Chronology of Cantabrian Spain. In: Radiocarbon. Volume 45, No. 1, The University of Arizona 2003, pp. 41-58, full text
  3. ↑ Penny Sarchet: Red Lady cave burial Reveals Stone Age secrets. On: newscientist.com of March 18, 2015. Also under the title Unveiling the Read Lady of El Mirón in New Scientist of March 21, 2015, pp. 8–9

Coordinates: 43 ° 14 ′ 47.4 "  N , 3 ° 27 ′ 4.5"  W.