The Early Pleistocene stone tools from Vallparadís (Barcelona, Spain): Rethinking the European Mode 1

The Vallparadís site contains a long and continuous archaeological sequence dating to between the late Early Pleistocene and the first half of the Middle Pleistocene. Levels 10 and 10c (unit EVT7) have yielded abundant macrofauna and Mode 1 stone tools calibrated by paleomagnetism and by biostratigraphy to the upper limit of the Jaramillo subchron (0.98 Ma) and by U-series/ESR to 0.83 ± 0.13 Ma. The industries, elaborated from local raw materials, are of small size. The chaînes opératoires used for lithic production are poorly elaborated and are based on an anvil knapping technique. Shaped tools include notches, becs, scrapers and denticulates on small pebbles, clasts, fragments and flakes as well as a large single chopper. Using a techno-typological study and comparisons with other known Early Pleistocene sites in Spain (Orce and Atapuerca) and elsewhere in Eurasia, we propose that these sites belong to an analogous Mode 1 techno-complex with a variability range. The fundamental difference between them lies in the retouched tools because these are poorly represented in Europe prior to around 1 Ma. In contrast, orthogonal knapping methods were used in the exploitation of the cores during all this period. The successive episodes of interbreeding and independent evolution regarding the phylogenetic reports on the hominin remains from Atapuerca would have probably led to regional technological traditions in the European Mode 1 lithic record.