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| 119 | T he cave of El Mirón (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria) contains an interesting archaeological deposit with important stratigraphic sections that attest to a human presence from at least the late Upper Pleistocene up to the present. This cave, with a vestibule that measures between about 16–18 m wide by 30 m deep by 13 m high and with a mouth that may be as high as about 20 m, opens out onto the limestone cliff that forms the western face of Monte Pando. It dominates a steep-sided valley where the rivers Gándara and Calera join and then in turn flow into the Río Asón at Ramales. At present, the cave is about 150 m above the valley floor at Ramales and about 260 m above sea level. The geographical location of the cave is manifestly strategic, dominating major avenues of communication between the Cantabrian coast and mountains and between the intermontane sector of the Asón Valley and the Meseta of Old Castile and the interior of Vizcaya as well as the high, enclosed mountain valley of Soba above Ramales (figure 8.1). The Asón basin, in which El Mirón is located, currently harbors an interesting vegetational landscape because of its high, abrupt relief, diversity of morphological forms, and lithological and pedological substrates. The coastal zone (the present-day Atlantic shore is no more than 25 km from the cave) has been intensely affected by human activity, and the autochthonous arboreal taxa have been decimated by the progressive spread of plantations of eucalyptus, which are now prominent in this area of Atlantic heaths. As one goes up, following the altitudinal gradient, the arboreal vegetation becomes progressively dominated by Cantabrian oaklands in areas of limestone bedrock. It is those areas of the interior that are not specifically rocky uplands—namely the river valley floors and gentle lower slopes—that are preferentially used by humans for agriculture and especially livestock raising, which of course affect the kinds of deciduous woods that can survive there. Finally, in the highest elevations calcicolous beech woods replace the oaks. Throughout this article we will refer to information obtained by means of palynological analysis of the vegetational environments that existed in the surroundings of El Mirón during its human occupations in the early to middle Holocene. Thus, the results ChAPter eight The Vegetational Contexts of el mirón Cave throughout the early to middle holocene Contributions from the Palynological study María José Iriarte Chiapusso Translated by Lawrence Guy Straus | 120 | Chapter Eight samples by means that vary according to conditions and characteristics that are functions of the type of sedimentary deposit that one is going to study. Next, in the laboratory, the sediment samples are subjected to physical and chemical treatment by means of which we extract the pollens and spores that are preserved therein. The next step involves the identification of the pollen grains and spores by means of an optical microscope and with reference to comparative collections of pollens and published drawings. After statistical analysis of the resultant pollen counts, they are represented graphically in the form of pollen diagrams or histograms, depending on the type of deposit and/ or the kinds of results that had been obtained (e.g., sample size and diversity). The final step consists of interpretation and comparison of the pollen spectrum with other relevant spectra from other contemporaneous sites and cores in the same or nearby regions, as well as with continental or even global records. What follows is a description of the different phases in the palynological analysis of the archaeological site in El Mirón Cave. El Mirón Sampling Ever since L. G. Straus and M. González Morales began the excavation of this cave in 1996, we were involved collaboratively in developing the strategy for palynologically sampling the sediments exposed. The strategy has been adapted to the differing characteristics of the deposits, and the samples are thus representative of the sequence and its lateral variations. Given the dimensions of the cave, its long stratigraphic sequence, its sedimentary characteristics, and the course of the archaeological campaigns, the palynological sampling has been done in several different columns, in all of which the sampling interval has been 5 cm except when sedimentary characteristics (e.g., presence of large stones or animal burrows) have prevented it. Among the columns sampled to date, information on the Holocene part of the sequence has been obtained from two (figures 8.2...

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