Upper Pleistocene and Holocene echinoids of the archaelogical record of Nerja Cave (Málaga, Spain)

Abstract

Between 30.000 and 4.000 years cal. BP (last Upper Pleistocene and most part of the Holocene), a wide stratigraphic series was settled in the entrace of Nerja Cave. This series is characterized by the presence of important records of human activities along all its vertical area that constitute one of the broadest archaelogical records on the Western Mediterranenan zone on this age. These evidences represent the technological remains typical of various cultural assemblages that follow one another through the sequence (Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Copper Age) and appear together plentiful plant remains (thirty taxons of conifers and angiosperms), almost a hundred species of invertebrates (Gastropoda, Scaphopoda, Bivalvia, Cephalopoda, Crustacea, Echinoidea) and vertebrates (more than hundred species, among fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals (including pinnipedes) related to human activities in the Cave. The presence of two echinoids species [Paracentrotus lividus (Lamark, 1816) and Echinocyamus pusillus (Müller, 1776)] along the sequence stands out among the invertebrades, which stratigraphic distribution and archaeological meaning we are going to present in this work. Its stratigraphical distribution includes from the Neolithic to the Solutrean, with a significant presence in the Epipaleolithic and Magdalenian levels.The presence of echinoids in the deposit is related to the anthropic activity, already be in a intencionated way or of indirect form, across the digestive device of the captured fishes presents in the same levels in high proportions.