L G Straus
Biographic Data
| ID | 989 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L G Straus |
| GIVEN NAMES | L G |
| FAMILY NAME | Straus |
| SIGNATURE | STRAUS L G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of New Mexico |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0348-3338 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 306 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2224 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 306 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 27 |
A Window into 40,000 Years of the Prehistory of Iberia
Since 1996, the El Mirón Cave Prehistoric Project in Cantabria, Spain, has been uncovering and studying an ever-increasing variety of finds. These range from “classic” ones such as artifacts, works of portable art, and faunal remains to unique ones—notably a Magdalenian-age human burial—to very novel ancient DNA discoveries in a long stratigraphic sequence spanning from the Mousterian through the Bronze Age, dated by 102 14C assays between >46,00…
Western European Micro-Blade Technology in “Pre-Clovis” Times
Bladelets (micro-blades) were key artifacts in the technologies of many Upper Paleolithic cultures in the Old World, among them the Magdalenian (∼21–14 ka) in Western Europe. Contemporary with claimed late pre-Clovis sites in the Americas, it succeeded the Solutrean technocomplex (∼25–21 ka) characterized by large foliate, concave-base, shouldered, and tanged lithic projectile points. Magdalenian bladelets were often inserted as replaceable eleme…
Elisabeth Vrba
Changes in pollen and small mammal spectrum compositions and in human-landscape relationships during the last 40,000 years of the Pleistocene in El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain
The important albeit discontinuous pollen and more complete small mammal microrecords from the long, Late Upper Pleistocene stratigraphic deposit in El Mirón Cave (Cantabria, Spain, >47,000–12,000 cal BP) are presented and compared in detail. They describe a sequence of environmental conditions varying from cold and relatively dry to somewhat more temperate and more humid throughout the course of late MIS 3 and MIS 2, and into the early Holocene …
Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age and Additional Magdalenian Radiocarbon Dates for El Mirón Cave (Ramales De La Victoria, Cantabria, Spain). Date List Vii
There are now 101 radiocarbon dates from the long Paleolithic and post-Paleolithic culture-stratigraphic sequence in El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain. Here we report on two dates on bone from two different humans whose remains were found in disturbed surface sediments in the cave vestibule rear and that confirm the existence of burials in addition to previously reported residential occupations in the vestibule front pertaining to the Chalcolithic …
Seasonality of Human Occupations in El Mirón Cave
Structuring domestic space in the Lower Magdalenian
Documenting the intentional structuring of space by hunter-gatherers can be challenging, especially in complex cave contexts. One approach is the spatial analysis of discard patterns. Here, the authors consider the spatial distribution of faunal remains from the Lower Magdalenian Level 115 in El Mirón Cave, Cantabria, to assess a possible structuring function for an unusual alignment of rocks. Although it is impossible to determine whether the al…
Re-dating the Early Upper Paleolithic Levels of Le Trou Magrite (Pont-à-Lesse, Belgium)
Objetos de arte mueble y funcionales del Magdaleniense inferior e inicial de la Cueva del Mirón (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria, España) ligados al Procesamiento del Ocre
Presentamos documentación y análisis detallados de un nódulo de ocre con una retícula grabada, un fragmento de ocre con incisiones profundas y un abrasionador de cuarcita con restos de ocre procedentes de los niveles del Magdaleniense inferior e inicial de la Cueva del Mirón. Estos objetos se añaden al inventario de hallazgos notables de los depósitos de este periodo en el yacimiento, y muestran la importancia de las actividades ligadas al proces…
The Editor's Thanks and Farewell
Initial and Lower Magdalenian Large Mammal Faunas and Human Subsistence at El Mirón Cave (Cantabria, Spain)
Assessing the Chronostratigraphy of El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain
El Mirón is an important archaeological cave site in Cantabria (Spain) with a stratigraphy covering the late Middle Paleolithic to the Modern Period. The Magdalenian levels are especially rich in artifacts, faunal remains, and features, and included the burial of an adult female (“the Red Lady”), as well as other scattered human remains, while the Neolithic levels contained the oldest combined evidence of ceramics, domesticated grain and livestoc…
JAR in the Time of Covid
Philip K. Bock
El Mirón Cave
La Riera Cave
A life in the pits
The Upper Paleolithic sequence in el Mirón Cave (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria, Spain)
Birds of prey and humans in prehistoric Europe
La Riera Cave
La industria ósea del Magdaleniense Inferior del Nivel 17 de la Cueva de El Mirón (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria)
Level 17 is the principal Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian horizon in the outer vestibule area of El Mirón Cave, dating by radiocarbon to c. 15,500 uncal bp. It has yielded very rich faunal and artifactual collections associated with numerous hearths and abundant fire-cracked rocks. Among the many osseous artifacts are a striation-engraved red deer scapula and a spearthrower reported on elsewhere. This article presents a description and preliminary t…
Sources of the ochres associated with the Lower Magdalenian “Red Lady” human burial and rock art in El Mirón Cave (Cantabria, Spain)
The Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition at El Mirón Cave (Cantabria, Spain)
Landscapes, climate change & forager mobility in the Upper Paleolithic of northern Spain
El Paleolítico Superior de la península ibérica
Este artículo intenta ofrecer una síntesis relativamente completa de lo que se conoce en la actualidad sobre la transición del Paleolítico medio al superior y el desarrollo de las adaptaciones humanas y de las culturas durante el último periodo en la Península Ibérica (España y Portugal, así como Andorra y Gibraltar). Los énfasis del trabajo, que es inevitablemente selectivo y se basa principalmente en la bibliografía disponible más reciente, son…
The Identification of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Aggregation Sites
It is a common assumption that an aggregation-and-dispersion pattern characterizes most of the world's hunter-gatherers, both past and present. A clarification of the pattern is put forth in support of the view that there is more to it than factors of subsistence ecology. Because there are many variants of hunter-gatherer aggregations, in terms of both activities and the factors that promote and effect them, it is clear that there will also be va…
On the Emergence of Modern Humans
Rethinking the Middle/Upper Paleolithic Transition [and Comments and Replies]
This paper critically examines previous statements concerning the nature of the Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition in Western Europe. Mellars's overview of the transition in southwestern France forms the point of departure for discussion. Several of Mellars's contentions are modified in light of methodological weaknesses and recently available data. It is suggested that many observed Middle/Upper Paleolithic differences are best understood with …
Archaeological implications of human-derived manganese coatings
Humans at the End of the Ice Age
Introduction: The World at the End of the Last Ice Age L.G. Straus. The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Africa and the Near East: L. Straus. At the Transition: The Archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Boundary in Southern Africa P.J. Mitchell, et al. Plus Ca Change: The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Northeastern Africa A.E. Close. The Impact of Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Climatic Changes on Humans in Southwestern Asia O. Bar-Yosef…
Carnivores and Cave Sites in Cantabrian Spain
This paper tests the common assumption that faunal remains found in Paleolithic cave sites in northern Spain were the result of hominid hunting. Using the carnivore/ungulate ratio devised by R. G. Klein, a large number of Middle and Upper Paleolithic faunal assemblages are compared. Carnivore remains and species are extremely abundant in certain caves and in levels particularly pertaining to the Mousterian and early Upper Paleolithic, suggesting …
Taphonomy at a Distance
Zhoukoudian is often cited as yielding some of the earliest evidence for the use of fire and as documenting "man the hunter" living in caves during the Middle Pleistocene. In addition, it is commonly believed that this important Chinese site documents cannibalism on the part of Middle Pleistocene hominids. We examine the data from Zhoukoudian with several questions in mind: (1) What are the agents responsible for the bone accumulations inside the…
El Mirón Cave and the 14 C Chronology of Cantabrian Spain
Excavations since 1996 in the large El Mirón Cave in the Cantabrian Cordillera of northern Spain have revealed a cultural sequence of late Mousterian, early Upper Paleolithic, Solutrean, Magdalenian, Azilian, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, and Medieval occupations. These components have been dated by 51 generally coherent radiocarbon determinations, all run by the Geochron labs, in association with the Lawrence Livermore labs fo…
Africa and Iberia in the Pleistocene
Symbolism and Modern Human Origins [and Comments and Reply]
A mosaic of change
On stone-boiling technology in the Upper Paleolithic
Upper paleolithic ibex hunting in southwest Europe
Last Glacial Human Settlement in Eastern Cantabria (Northern Spain)
Extraordinary Early Magdalenian finds from El Mirón Cave, Cantabria (Spain)
The authors describe three splendid and newly discovered objects from the Upper Palaeolithic in northern Spain: an engraved scapula, a possible spearthrower and a decorated stone pendant. As well as adding to the corpus of iconic artefacts from the period, these new finds have the special virtue of being meticulously excavated and recorded in context
Ice Age Atlantis? Exploring the Solutrean-Clovis 'connection
Bradley and Stanford (2004 Bradley, B. and Stanford, D. 2004. The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World. World Archaeology, 36: 459–478. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) have raised now, in several instances, the claim that European Upper Paleolithic Solutrean peoples colonized North America, and gave rise to the archaeological complex known as Clovis. They do so in the f…
The Pleistocene–holocene Transition in the Iberian Peninsula
Further Radiocarbon Dates for the Upper Paleolithic of El Mirón Cave (Ramales De La Victoria, Cantabria, Spain)
This article expands the date list from the Stone Age cave site of El Mirón in the Cantabrian Cordillera of northern Spain to a total of 62 radiocarbon determinations, one of the longest series from a single prehistoric site in Iberia. All the assays (accelerator mass spectrometry [AMS] and conventional, run on charcoal and bone collagen) were done by a single laboratory (Geochron, GX). The 11 new dates confirm 1) the late spread of Neolithic eco…
The Upper Paleolithic Rock Art of Iberia
Southwestern Europe at the Last Glacial Maximum
Human Geography of the Late Upper Paleolithic in Western Europe
The indications of human abandonment of northwestern Europe and of increased population density in southwestern Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum (centered on 18-20,000 B.P.) are linked in a proposed causal relationship. Evidence for subsistence intensification and growth of socioterritorial complexity associated with developments in cave art in the Franco-Cantabrian region are intepreted in light of the human geographical and environmental …
A Quarter-Century of Research on the Solutrean of Vasco-Cantabria, Iberia and beyond
Twenty-five years ago, my initial approach to the Solutrean archaeological phenomenon was to use it as a conveniently bounded case study for the explanation of interassemblage variability in the Upper Paleolithic. Although my main conclusions supported an essentially functionalist basis for explaining Solutrean variability, subsequent discoveries do also point to a process of technological change, or "desolutreanization," toward the end of the pe…
Iberia Before the Iberians
Microremains from El Mirón Cave human dental calculus suggest a mixed plant–animal subsistence economy during the Magdalenian in Northern Iberia
The Magdalenian settlement of the Cantabrian region (Northern Spain)
Preliminary Site Survey of the Meseta del Norte, Northern Burgos Province, Spain
The Ladizian
Pointes solutréennes et l'hypothèse de territorialisme
Guy Straus Lawrence. Pointes solutréennes et l'hypothèse de territorialisme. In: Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française. Comptes rendus des séances mensuelles, tome 74, n°7, 1977. pp. 206-212
La Riera Paleoecological Project
Of Neanderthal Hillbillies, Origin Myths and Stone Tools
(1978). Of Neanderthal Hillbillies, Origin Myths and Stone Tools: Notes on Upper Paleolithic Assemblage Variability. Lithic Technology: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 36-39
Prehistoric Investigations in Cantabrian Spain
The rich Paleolithic record from Cantabrian Spain has long been interpreted in light of the phylogenetic, chronological scheme developed largely in the Périgord region of SW France, despite important differences in industries, environments, and faunas. This paper outlines the development of prehistoric research in Cantabria from its beginnings a century ago to the present, from the early work of establishing a regional chronology to the on-going …
La Riera Paleoecological Project
Tito Bustillo cave (Asturias, Spain) and the Magdalenian of Cantabria
Meticulous new horizontal excavations in the original entrance of the painted cave of Tito Bustillo (Ribadesella, Asturias) have revealed a genuine, intact Upper Magdalenian living floor. It is rich in food remains, hearths, manufacturing debris, stone and antler tools, and mobile art works. A series of six radiocarbon dates shows this occupation to be remarkably early for one with an industry including classic antler harpoons (c. 13–14, 500 B.P.…
Caves
This essay examines caves and rockshelters as key sources of information on the environments and adaptations of Paleolithic hunter‐gatherers. This class of sites is compared with open air sites, and the merits and problems of each class are discussed. The emphasis of the article is on the practical difficulties and limitations of cave/shelter excavation and analysis, and reviews methods useful in partially overcoming the basic problems of stratig…
La Riera Paleoecological Project
The Role of Raw Materials in Lithic Assemblage Variability
(1980). The Role of Raw Materials in Lithic Assemblage Variability. Lithic Technology: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 68-72
The Identification of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Aggregation Sites
It is a common assumption that an aggregation-and-dispersion pattern characterizes most of the world's hunter-gatherers, both past and present. A clarification of the pattern is put forth in support of the view that there is more to it than factors of subsistence ecology. Because there are many variants of hunter-gatherer aggregations, in terms of both activities and the factors that promote and effect them, it is clear that there will also be va…
Recent Developments in Old World Archaeology
In the second annual review of Old World archaeology, the authors have restructured their attention to three topics: (1) some issues of a theoretical and philosophical nature, involving differing stances on contemporary theoretical trends and the nature of the differences between the social scientist and humanist approaches to archaeology; (2) the wealth of recent work that has altered the conceptual framework of Paleolithic and Mesolithic archae…
On the Clactonian
Paleoecology at La Riera (Asturias, Spain) [and Comments and Reply]
Excavations were conducted at La Riera to test hypotheses concerning variability among Upper Paleolithic/Mesolithic artifact assemblages and to define and begin to explain changing hunter-gatherer adaptations to the coastal region at the end of the Wurm and the beginning of the Holocene. The 36 strata contain assemblages that can be assigned to Aurignacian(?), Solutrean, Magdalenian, Azilian, and Asturian culture-stratigraphic units. However, the…
A Complete Manual of Field Archaeology
Rethinking the Middle/Upper Paleolithic Transition [and Comments and Replies]
This paper critically examines previous statements concerning the nature of the Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition in Western Europe. Mellars's overview of the transition in southwestern France forms the point of departure for discussion. Several of Mellars's contentions are modified in light of methodological weaknesses and recently available data. It is suggested that many observed Middle/Upper Paleolithic differences are best understood with …
Carnivores and Cave Sites in Cantabrian Spain
This paper tests the common assumption that faunal remains found in Paleolithic cave sites in northern Spain were the result of hominid hunting. Using the carnivore/ungulate ratio devised by R. G. Klein, a large number of Middle and Upper Paleolithic faunal assemblages are compared. Carnivore remains and species are extremely abundant in certain caves and in levels particularly pertaining to the Mousterian and early Upper Paleolithic, suggesting …
News and Short Contributions
The Acheulean Culture of the Hunsgi Valley (Peninsular India)
Archeology
Paleolithic Investigations in Les Landes, France
The Sahara
Terra Amata and the Middle Pleistocene Archaeological Record of Southern France. Paola Villa
De la chasse au Troupeau en Méditerranée occidentale
Archaeology (191 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (172 works) · History (161 works) · Geography (155 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (121 works) · Archaeological and Geological Studies (101 works) · Art (101 works) · Cave (92 works) · Computer Science (78 works) · Geology (78 works)