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Reply to ‘Dating on its own cannot resolve hominin occupation patterns’ and ‘No reliable evidence for a very early Aurignacian in Southern Iberia’

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, pages 714–715 (2019)Cite this article

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To the Editor — de la Peña1 and Anderson et al.2 raise technical concerns regarding our interpretation of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition at Bajondillo3 (levels Bj/14-Bj/11). It is important to note that our paper focused specifically on the chronology of levels Bj/14–Bj/11. As such, technocultural and palaeoenvironmental aspects of the sequence were not dealt with in detail. These have previously been presented in Spanish4,5 and, although they were summarized in our Supplementary Information3, they were not the primary focus of the paper. However, since concerns have cast doubts on the validity of the technocultural interpretation of Bajondillo, we recap key points from these publications again here, the most important of which is that the lithics from Bj/13 were never identified as Mousterian, but consistently as Upper Palaeolithic5. We also refute the accusation that the dates from the layers in question are disputable due to post-depositional mixing and illuminate the history of external interpretation of the site, which we believe is what has led to confusion.

Definition of the Aurignacian and its sub-industries is not always consistent (for a brief discussion, see ref. 6) and requires sufficient material for precision. Though de la Peña proposes that one differential diagnosis of the material is as a previously undescribed Upper Palaeolithic industry1, such refined technological attribution is not possible with the relatively small lithic sample at Bajondillo: the most important thing is that lithic material is clearly Upper Palaeolithic, and we interpret Aurignacian as the ‘closest fit’ for sub-designation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain

    Miguel Cortés-Sánchez, María D. Simón-Vallejo & Carlos P. Odriozola

  2. HUM949-Group, Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain

    Miguel Cortés-Sánchez, María D. Simón-Vallejo, María Carmen Lozano Francisco, José L. Vera Peláez, Carlos P. Odriozola & Rubén Parrilla-Giráldez

  3. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka, Japan

    Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo & Naohiko Ohkouchi

  4. Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra, CSIC-UGR, Armilla, Spain

    Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo & Antonio García-Alix

  5. CHER, Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK

    Chris Stringer

  6. Departamento de Estratigrafía y Paleontología. Universidad de Granada. Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain

    Antonio García-Alix

  7. Departamento de Geografía y Ciencias del Territorio, Universidad de Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain

    José A. Riquelme-Cantal

  8. Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, Madrid, Spain

    Adolfo Maestro González

  9. Laboratorio de Arqueozoología, Departamento de Biología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Arturo Morales-Muñiz

Authors
  1. Miguel Cortés-Sánchez
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  2. Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo
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Correspondence to Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo.

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Cortés-Sánchez, M., Jiménez-Espejo, F.J., Simón-Vallejo, M.D. et al. Reply to ‘Dating on its own cannot resolve hominin occupation patterns’ and ‘No reliable evidence for a very early Aurignacian in Southern Iberia’. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 714–715 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0887-1

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