Fifty thousand years of prehistory at the cave of Abauntz (Arraitz, Navarre): A nexus point between the Ebro Valley, Aquitaine and the Cantabrian Corridor

The cave of Abauntz is, since the beginning of fieldwork in the 1970s, one of the major milestones of the Iberian prehistory. It has yielded thousands of first-level remains that belong to at least nine cultural periods from the Mousterian to the Late Roman period. This paper presents to the international scientific community the state of the art of our knowledge about the stratigraphy, the materials, and their interpretation in its regional context. Situated in a strategic place, the cave was used as a camp by Neanderthal groups; Solutrean, Magdalenian and Azilian hunters; Neolithic shepherds; employed for funerary purposes by Chalcolithic people; and as a hiding place by Roman citizens who feared the first Germanic invaders. Many of the remains (Vasconian cleavers, saiga bones and decorative motifs from the Middle Magdalenian, an engraved horse in a block from the Late Magdalenian) suggest strong links with the Aquitaine area, easily reachable through the passes that communicate this zone with the northern territories. In some moments (such as the Solutrean), the cave clearly acted as a nexus point between the Mediterranean-related sites of the Ebro basin and the Cantabria-Aquitania zone.