Excavations in Trevino confirm discovery of oldest quarry of Iberian Peninsula

July saw the termination of the excavation campaign of Trevino, directed by Andoni Tarrino, geologist at the Centro Nacional de investigacion sobre la Evolucion Humana (CENIEH), which confirms the discovery of the oldest quarry in the Iberian Peninsula, Pozarrate, about 6,000 years old, and in which a scapula from a herbivore and three deer antlers were recovered.

Credit: CENIEH

During the work that commenced last July 1 at this Neolithic flint quarry of Pozarrate, located in the Sierra de Araico, County Trevino (Burgos), about 20 m3 of mining debris have been extracted and several thousand flint fragments, including the waste products and tools of mining activity, seven ophite maces and various flint axes unearthed.

"But the most important mining tools we've found include the scapula of an herbivore and three deer antlers, which together with the nine recovered in previous campaigns, allow us to affirm that this site has produced the largest set of antlers associated with the Neolithic mining of flint on the peninsula, " says Andoni Tarrino.

Credit: CENIEH

The campaign has also succeeded in defining the wall and the base of the quarry, removing the debris from the operational rock face, which currently has a length of 5 m and 2.5 m high under a 1 m thick chalky gap of anthropogenic origin.

It has also freed the inclined rocky plane constituting the base of the quarry covering an area of 30 m2, which has an inclination of 21° (40%). The bedrock retains imprints of the nodules of extracted flint, some more than 40 cm long.

The 2019 Campaign is part of the "Araico Project", funded by the MICINN (former MINECO) with 59,290 euros, a research project that aims to raise awareness of the extraction and supply of flint as a mineral resource in the Upper Pleistocene and Holocene eras. As in previous years, the Campaign has also received funding from the Regional Government of Castilla y Leon, the Provincial Council of Alava and the Trevino Municipality.

Source: Centro Nacional de Investigacion sobre la Evolucion Humana, CENIEH [August 02, 2019]