The occupational pattern of the Galería site (Atapuerca, Spain): A technological perspective

Galería is one of the main sites of the Trinchera del Ferrocarril (railway trench) in Atapuerca, together with Gran Dolina and Sima del Elefante. The Galería excavations took place mainly during the 1980s and 1990s and continued until 2010. Work has recently resumed in the upper levels of the sequence, which has prompted us to summarize the previously collected data and plan an entire new set of questions in order to be able to compare that earlier data with information yielded from the new interventions. Galería consists of a long sequence dating from around 500 ka to 250 ka, which has made it possible to conduct a diachronic study of the technology at the site. As a consequence of the sustainment of similar occupational patterns and a similar 'toolkit', the technology at Galería generally enjoyed a broad stability throughout the technology the Middle Pleistocene. Nevertheless, we have isolated technological characteristics which reflect technological changes through time.In this case, we present a synchronic analysis of the human occupation phases of each subunit, which finally led us to a diachronic view of the site. Most of the knapping sequences occurred outside of the cave, making the chaînes opératoires very fragmented. This was the result of short and sporadic occupations for the basic purpose of obtaining the animals that had fallen into the cave through a natural trap created by the TN shaft, in successful competition with carnivores. Although lithic refits are very scarce, we used them in this study to characterize the spatial distribution not only of the activities performed, but also of the knapping sequences carried out inside the cave. The two knapping locations (outside and inside) reflect different knapping strategies