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| xxv | A ccording to legend, the name El Mirón has an ancient imperial origin.1 In the fall of 1556 the king of Spain and Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, having abdicated in favor of his son Phillip II, was en route to his place of retirement, the monastery of yuste in Extremadura (southwestern Spain). He had traveled by ship from Flanders to one of the habitual ports of both his imperial “commute” and the royal wool trade in northern Spain, Laredo, situated in what is today the autonomous region of Cantabria, between the cities of Santander and Bilbao. Ahead lay the steep climb up the Camino Real via the valleys of the Río Asón and its tributary, the Calera, and then over the cordillera by one of its lowest passes, Los Tornos, above the Vizcayan town of Lanestosa, up onto the high, dry northern Castilian Meseta of the ancient province of Burgos—the vast, hard lands of the Cid. But as his litter-bearers made their way up the Asón to the town of Ramales at the foot of the mountain chain, the emperor was still in the narrow, steep, humid world of Atlantic Spain, with its dense oak, hazel, elm, linden, and chestnut forests and verdant pastures. The Camino Real was probably little better than a rude track, especially as it ascended the grade from Ramales to Lanestosa, up the face of what the geologists call a hanging valley. At the confluence of the Calera with the Gándara, not far from where it joins the Asón in Ramales, its deep valley is surrounded by 1,000 m peaks: La Busta, El Moro, and most dramatic of all, San Vicente, at the eastern end of the jagged crest of the Sierra del Hornijo—visible on a clear day from the heights above Santander along the coast, some 35 km distant as the crow flies to the northwest. The emperor had come some 20 km (about three and two-thirds Spanish leagues) from Laredo and his bearers were tired as they diagonally ascended the road up the scree at the base of El Haza cliff. Set down by his men so that they could rest, Charles drew open the curtains of the litter to let in the sun and was greeted with the spectacle of pyramidal Pico San Vicente framed by its rays. The old monarch is said to have pulled himself heavily to his feet, drawn out by the grandeur of the view. He then stood “mirón”—staring fixedly, awestruck—at the scene: the towering mountains before him, the deep canyon with its Preamble la Cueva del mirón: A grand Cave site in the Cantabrian Cordillera of northern spain Lawrence Guy Straus | xxvi | Preamble El Castillo and the important residential and art site of Hornos de la Peña, and in the same year he had begun to excavate in Altamira. Sierra discovered the cave art of El Salitre, the site (but not the art) of Cullalvera, and two entrances of the now-famous La Garma karstic system, all in 1903, and he was to discover Venta de la Perra in 1904 and El Valle in 1905. Naturally, given their respectivebases ,Alcaldetendedtofocushisexplorationsonthe central and western parts of what was then the province of Santander and in eastern Asturias (El Pindal), while Sierra concentrated on eastern and central Santander. But the pair collaborated not only in their prospections around Ramales but also visited each other’s discoveries together, often within just days of the finds. The list of their discoveries of sites and of cave art (including figures in caves that had already been explored by the first of this region’s archaeologists, Sanz de Sautuola) during afive-yearperiodisstaggering(seeAlcaldedelRío1906; Madariaga 1972; Sierra 1908; Madariaga 2000:71). One cave that they apparently explored together (although it may first have been visited by Sierra) was, however, for a long time to relegated to insignificance or simply forgotten: El Mirón. Another half century was to pass before anyone was to make an attempt to investigate the archaeological potential of El Mirón Cave, which had been repeatedly but only very briefly suggested in the early literature (e.g., Sierra 1908:110; Alcalde del Río Breuil, and Sierra 1911:11; Cabré 1915:42; Obermaier 1924:157). And that attemptwasanonymousandunpublished.Atrenchand a pit were dug across the width of the pitch-black inner cave, apparently by workmen engaged in the construction of a...

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