Geoarchaeology of the Cobrinhos site (Vila Velha de Ródão, Portugal) - a record of the earliest Mousterian in western Iberia

Cobrinhos (Vila Velha do Ródão, central eastern Portugal) is a Mousterian site found during factory construction in 2014. This area is located in the Lower Tejo valley, which is characterized in terms of geomorphology by six river terraces, numbered downwards (T1 to T6), with Palaeolithic industries associated only with T4 to T6. Terrace T4 was recently dated as spanning ca. 340 ka to 155 ka, with Acheulean in the basal and middle levels and early Mousterian in the uppermost levels. The geological context at Cobrinhos is a colluvial unit that links to the top of T4. It has evidence for palaeoweathering with the same characteristics as seen in T1 to T4, considerably different from that seen in T5 and T6. Despite disturbance by ploughing, the site shows a uniform distribution of sizes and shapes of lithic artefacts, with thousands of implements