Internet Archaeol. 5. Walker & Gibert

5.0 Concluding remarks

We shall try to avoid too much unwarranted conjecture. Sima de las Palomas seems to offer two hominids separated in time by 60,000 years. A later one (50-60,000 years ago) is Neanderthal, whereas an earlier, 'pre'-Neanderthal one (120-130,000 years ago) shows anatomical features that are untypical of Neanderthals, and more archaic morphologically-speaking. A parsimonious working hypothesis, if a disconcerting one, is that the early form represents a vestige of Middle Pleistocene European hominids (Homo sapiens steinheimensis, a.k.a. Homo heidelbergensis steinheimensis) who had survived into a time (120-130,000 years ago) when Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) had already arisen and occurred elsewhere (e.g. Krapina, Rink et al. 1995). Future research at the site could corroborate this hypothesis, demand modifications to it, or overturn it completely. If correct, the hypothesis might imply that Neanderthals in SE Spain are later than 120,000 years ago (an age of around 100,000 years ago has been argued for another non-Neanderthal archaic cranial fossil, found 70km to the north: Cuenca and Walker 1980)

Very little can yet be said, which is not trite, about functional or palaeoeconomic contrasts between the two sites themselves. This is both because their geochronology is too vague for commensurability to be assured, and also because excavations and detailed analyses of the findings are still at an early stage. Little is to be gained by dwelling on self-justifying actualistic conjectures, however plausible, that Sima de las Palomas was used throughout the year whereas Cueva Negra was a temporary summer campsite, much less that it was possibly so used by foragers who ventured inland from Sima de las Palomas. Rather, we feel a long haul is needed for us to assess palaeoecological aspects of hominid palaeoethology (palaeoeconomy plays a vital part here) that are open to contrasting analyses of limited working hypotheses, preferably ones that are potentially refutable by tests within a factual universe informed, first and foremost, by observations, finds, and data, at the sites themselves. Detailed statistical analyses of palaeoecological findings, and their taphonomies in their spatiotemporal contexts at the sites, as well as of artifacts with use-wear microscopy and refitting data, may lead to formulation of limited working hypotheses about hominid palaeoethology, but they must follow upon laboratory research that is still in progress and must not be imprudently launched as conjectures which may pre-empt and distort their correct elaboration.