Valdocarros archaeological site

The Valdocarros deposit is located on the right bank of the Jarama river, downstream from the town of Arganda del Rey, on the lower terrace and even on the river's flood plain, a few meters from its channel.

In the Jarama river valley, between Mejorada del Campo and San Martín de la Vega and in the Manzanares valley, downstream from Cerro de San Isidro, the highest concentration of paleolithic deposits in the Iberian Peninsula has been documented and one of the most large in Europe. This circumstance is due to the special geological characteristics of this area, which has favored the preservation of archaeological and paleontological remains, in combination with the intense removal of its deposits since the end of the XNUMXth century.

Valdocarros - 1, where only 18 m could be excavated², constitutes a flood plain far from the main channel of the Jarama river. The higher intensity overflows of the river periodically deposited sediments in the area, until a migration from the Jarama partially eroded these deposits and created a meander. 

The dispersion of the remains found, lithic pieces and fauna, indicate that human occupation took place on the edge of the valley next to the escarpment. This escarpment, just over 3 meters high, could have been used as a protection zone. It was occupied at least three times, since three stratigraphic levels with archaeological remains were identified.

In Valdocarros - 2 a total of 836 m were excavated² of the arch of an abandoned meander and four flood levels, 30-50 cm thick, with archaeological remains were distinguished, indicating that the hominins returned to this area, at least four times, with time intervals of about a few years or even a few decades, perhaps because of the shelter that the meander depression would provide in the floodplain and because of the vegetation and proximity to the river, which would supply a wide variety of resources. 

More than 3.000 stone pieces were registered, in which all the phases of the preparation of the tools have been identified, from the obtaining of the block of raw material and the hammering, to the chips that jumped during the carving process, the flakes and the retouched utensils, in addition to characteristic pieces of the initial phases of the Paleolithic. 

About two thirds of the set of carved pieces are made of flint, one third of quartzite and the rest of quartz. A different use of raw materials has been observed. While in flint they are fundamentally useful on small and medium-sized flakes, probably due to the sharp edges that are obtained when carving this raw material, large utensils (bifaces and trihedrals) were made in quartzite. In addition, the reuse of ancient stone pieces that hominins collected and reconditioned for use was documented.

The finding of large concentrations of stone pieces and the fact that some of them fit together, along with the presence of numerous utensils, shows that carving activities were carried out in the site.

Vegetable materials were also used by human groups, although due to their difficult conservation it is not easy for them to reach us. In Valdocarros, the clay medium has allowed imprints to be preserved, which correspond to pieces of wood that could have been used by hominins.

The fauna appears fragmented and disjointed, with a distribution similar to that of the lithic industry. Among the 2.750 large mammal remains recovered, the best represented species is Cervus elaphusfollowed by Equus caballus, Bos primigenius and to a lesser extent Capreolus sp. Women sp., y the elephant sp., to which must be added a small number of carnivorous remains (Felix sp. Canis lupus y Vulpes vulpes).

Among the micro-mammals, the remains of up to nine different species were recovered. They highlight the common hedgehog, shrew, European beaver, migratory hamster, water rat, vole, field mouse and mainly rabbit, which, given its abundance, may have been contributed by hominins. 

The study of the amphibian and reptile fossils of Valdocarros has allowed us to characterize in rapid climatic and environmental terms a rapid change (less than 1.000 years), from cold to warm conditions. 

In summary, some 250.000 years ago on the left bank of the Jarama river valley, shortly before its confluence with the Manzanares, human groups settled for short periods of time along the escarpment of the eastern edge of the river plain (Valdocarros 1) . A few tens of meters, several centuries later, perhaps millennia, the river formed a meander that, when abandoned, was also used as a "base camp" (Valdocarros 2). The hominins transported animal remains to these places, which they cut with the stone tools made with the quartzite, quartz and flint boulders that they collected on the banks of the Jarama. Horses and deer were the most consumed animal species by hominins, which also fed on large bovines, roe deer and fallow deer. Later, small carnivores took advantage of some of the abandoned remains.

In the exploitation of aggregates that the TRAMSA company carried out in a quarry in Arganda del Rey, remains of fauna and lithic industry were identified in levels of silts and clays deposited by the Jarama river, for which reason soundings were made to evaluate and delimit the findings. Subsequently, an extensive archaeological excavation was carried out.

The discovery of the Valdocarros deposit took place within the framework of the research project on the Pleistocene of the valleys of the Manzanares and Jarama rivers, developed between the end of 2002 and 2006 by a multidisciplinary team made up of archaeologists, geologists, paleontologists and paleobotanists coordinated by Joaquín Panera, Susana Rubio-Jara and Alfredo Pérez-González. In the course of the same, the fronts of the open quarries for the extraction of aggregates in the mining exploitations of the Manzanares and Jarama valleys were supervised. The Valdocarros deposit in particular was discovered in 2004, during the project called "Geoarchaeological investigation of the river deposits of the Jarama and Manzanares rivers: archaeological prospecting, collection of samples and control of earth movements", financed by the General Directorate of Heritage Historical of the Community of Madrid.