The project ‘Last Neanderthals at the Crossroads of Central Europe and the Mediterranean’ (NECEM) combines lithic analyses of previously excavated material with new sampling for dating and environmental DNA. New radiocarbon dates from Vindija, presented here, help clarify the chronology of late Neanderthal and early modern human occupations in South-eastern and Central Europe.

Fuente Mudarra is on a gentle slope on the left bank of the Pico River, near Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain. A 12−m2 test pit was dug at this large open-air site between 2012 and 2017. Several upper Pleistocene archaeological levels were documented. Results from Fuente Mudarra confirm that Neanderthal groups, little represented at cave sites, occupied Sierra de Atapuerca from the end of the middle Pleistocene and during the upper Pleistocene. The site also provides insight into Neanderthal spatial organization in the Atapuerca area and whether they used the caves in an occasional, non-habitual way like the open-air sites.

Landscape evolution studies enable us to understand site formation processes affecting past hunter-gatherer settlements. This work presents a landscape reconstruction of Roca dels Bous site (RB), which is a reference site for the Late Mousterian occupation of the incised valleys of the southeastern Pyrenees. For this purpose, we combined geomorphological studies, stratigraphic descriptions, new single-grain optically stimulated luminescence datasets, statistical methods, and geophysical surveys. RB formed by gravitational processes induced by fluvial undermining of the Segre River during changing late Pleistocene climatic conditions. Geomorphological and chronological data combined with fluvial age-incision models suggest that, during Late Mousterian occupation, RB was located very near the Segre floodplain level and closer to water and raw material natural resources than at present. The accumulation of gravitational deposits associated with the archaeological levels occurred at rates of 0.16–0.44 m ka-1, between 55 and 47 ka, coinciding with Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 (MIS3). More detailed comparison with available climatic curves suggests that the dated RB layers were potentially deposited during cold phases within MIS3. This work provides new landscape-based evidence to examine the paleoenvironmental context of Neanderthal presence in the southeastern Pre-Pyrenees, an important region in the debate regarding Neanderthal demise in Western Europe around 40 ka.

Traditional views of Neanderthal hunting strategies envisage them preying on herd species such as bison and deer, rather than the sophisticated tracking of solitary animals. Analysis of faunal remains from El Esquilleu Cave in northern Spain, however, demonstrates that during certain periods of the Middle Palaeolithic occupation, Neanderthals focused on the hunting of ibex and chamois, small solitary species that inhabited the mountainous terrain around the site. These results indicate that Neanderthal hunting practices may have had more similarity to those of their Upper Palaeolithic relatives than is usually assumed.

The authors identify natural bitumen on stone implements dating to 70 000 BP. It is proposed that this represents residue from hafting, taking the practice back a further 30 000 years from the date previously noted and published in Nature. The bitumen was tracked to a source 40km away, using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and carbon isotopes.

A worked stone from a secure Mousterian context has a bone splinter driven through it and appears to modern eyes like an attempt to represent a face. The authors argue that a face was indeed intended, and that the Roche-Cotard “proto-figurine” can be counted among the earliest art objects. At this place and date it should refer to a Neanderthal people.