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| 1 | i t is a tradition in prehistoric archaeology that classic excavations were those done in big caves and rockshelters, with long stratigraphies. These became “type sites” for regions and time-slices or even for the entire record of continents. Sites such as Spy, Le Trou Magrite, La Quina, La Ferrassie, Laugerie, Isturitz, Mas d’Azil, Szeleta, Tabun, Haua Fteah, the caves at Grimaldi and at Klasies River mouth, and—closer to the subject of this book— El Castillo immediately come to mind. The traditional modus operandi of excavating large, deep sites was perfectly suited to the overall aims of the culture-historical approach to prehistory; these sites were likely to yield long sequences of distinctive industries exemplified by large, “representative” collections of diagnostic artifacts (and, sometimes, works of “art”) that both allowed for reliable temporal/cultural attributions and provided the kinds of materials that museums (or private collectors) wanted to possess and display. These “mega-sites” were usually dug in extenso during the early decades of the discipline’s existence (i.e., before World War II), with large crews of workers using picks, shovels, and sometimes dynamite and mine cars on rails. On the one hand, the volume of sediment removed—often in very short order—was staggering, making it hard for us today to imagine how the excavators (legendary figures such as Edouard Lartet, denis Peyrony, Edouard Piette, Edouard dupont, dorothy Garrod, Réne and Suzanne de Saint-Périer, Hugo Obermaier, et al.) were able to recover as much as they did. On the other hand, the strategy of totally or substantially emptying large caves and rockshelters did provide ample coverage of broad areas, thereby “evening out” the effects of spatially segregated, activityrelated debris and increasing the yields of rare finds, notably human burials and unusual works of portable art or adornment. In recent decades, under the influence perhaps of processual archaeology and economic prehistory, and certainly because of ethical preservation considerations, financial constraints, and the increasing emphasis on great detail in interdisciplinary research, excavations of prehistoric sites have become smaller and much more painstaking—definitely muchslower,whilemovingmuchlessdirt.Theprofessionhascometorealizethatprehistoric ChAPter one The excavation of el mirón Cave Lawrence Guy Straus | 2 | Chapter One Abri dufaure (Les Landes, France), whose rockshelter had been entirely dug out by Abbé Henri Breuil and a colleague in 1900. He tested a number of sites of various periods in Portugal and then, in collaboration with Marcel Otte, dug small remnants of two classic Middle and Upper Paleolithic sites in Wallonia (Belgium)—le Trou Magrite and Hermitage-Huccorgne—as well as two small, specialized sites—l’Abri du Pape (Mesolithic) and la Grotte du Bois Laiterie (Magdalenian). González Morales had excavated another site originally discovered by Hermilio Alcalde del Río and first dug by Vega del Sella, namely an Asturian Mesolithic shell midden in Mazaculos Cave, and tested a number of other shellmidden sites. He also conducted a salvage excavation in the small Magdalenian rockshelter of Entrefoces (also in Asturias) and documented a surficial late Gravettian occupation immediately beneath rupestral art images in Fuente del Salín (western Cantabria). Finally, he had excavated the small Magdalenian-Azilian-Mesolithic sites of El Perro rockshelter and La Fragua Cave and the Mesolithic shell midden in La Trecha Cave and sampled for dating the earlier-excavated terminal Paleolithic and Mesolithic cave of La Chora, all in eastern Cantabria. All these excavations had helped answer interesting and sometimes important questions, but the samples and the coverages were generally limited and thus possibly biased. In the present era, it is rare in western Europe to discover an essentially pristine cave site that is both large in area and deep in stratigraphy. The opportunity that El Mirón has presented to us is, although not unique (Franchthi Cave on the Argolid Peninsula of Greece is certainly a similar case), at least highly unusual, and it poses a great responsibility. From the outset, El Mirón has allowed (and obligated) us to try to “do it right,” to excavate meticulously, to experiment and then establish thorough protocols for “total” recovery via flotation and finescreeningandforcomputerizedprovenancerecording . The great size of the cave vestibule, whose deposits proved to be largely undisturbed (despite superficial appearancesandtheopinionsof someearlierarchaeologists ), would permit fairly broad exposure of “living surfaces ” and therefore lend itself to analyses of structures and activity areas within this vast sheltered area. From the outset in 1995, when Straus proposed to González Morales the idea of testing El Mirón, the adaptive...

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