Palynology and chronology of hyaena coprolites from the Piñar karstic Caves Las Ventanas and Carihuela, southern Spain
Introduction
Pollen analysis of coprolites and other fossil faecal materials, although useful in the reconstruction of past flora and vegetation (Scott, 1987; Horwitz and Goldberg, 1989; Carrión et al., 1995a, Carrión et al., 1995b, Carrión et al., 1999, Carrión et al., 2004, Carrión et al., 2006, Carrión et al., 2007, Carrión et al., 2008, Carrión et al., 2018; Scott, 1994; Latorre et al., 2002; González-Sampériz et al., 2003; Yll et al., 2006; Marais et al., 2015; Gatta et al., 2016; Daura et al., 2017; De Porras et al., 2017; Williams et al., 2018) and cave taphonomy (Navarro et al., 2000, Navarro et al., 2001; Scott et al., 2003; Hunt and Fiacconi, 2018), remains an underutilized resource in palaeoecology. Some of the problems associated with their use include uncertainty about the chronostratigraphic and biological origin of the coprolite. Post-depositional pollen corrosion, biases due to pollen transport, contamination and reworking of palynomorphs complicate the investigation (Carrión et al., 2009; Gatta et al., 2016). Here we report pollen analyses and radiocarbon dating of coprolites plausibly attributed to the spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta) from two adjacent Palaeolithic caves in southern Spain, Las Ventanas (LV) and Carihuela (Car) (Fig. 1). With the aforementioned methodological limitations in mind, our goal is twofold, viz., to decipher the palaeoenvironmental signals of the palynomorphs, and to investigate the age of the coprolites and the demise of Crocuta crocuta in the region.
Section snippets
Physical setting
Las Ventanas Cave (3° 25′17″W, 37° 24′54″N) and Carihuela Cave (3° 25′47″W, 37° 26′ 56″N) are located 500 m apart in Píñar, 45 km northeast of Granada city in southern Spain (Fig. 1). The regional climate is Mediterranean, with a mean annual temperature of 12–15 °C, and a mean annual precipitation of 250–600 mm. The modern landscape is largely utilized for agriculture (wheat, barley, olives, wine grapes) (Wigand, 1978). Local woodlands are characterized by Quercus rotundifolia, with Q. faginea
Las Ventanas
Las Ventanas and Carihuela are just two of the many caves located in this karstic region (Fig. 1). Las Ventanas Cave, some 1200 m deep, gets its name from its three entrances (Fig. 2). The main cave axis is orientated easterly from the main entrance. The archaeology dates from before the Upper Palaeolithic to the present, and includes lithics, pottery, and bone remains of different animals and anatomically modern humans (Riquelme and Moreno, 1999; Riquelme, 2002). A palynological study of
Material and methods
The coprolites (LV) sampling was conducted near the cave entrance from the pit where they were preserved in outcrop sediments (Table 2, Fig. 2), the same area sampled by Carrión et al. (2001). All the Carihuela coprolite samples were taken from specimens at Granada's Archaeological Museum (Carrión et al., 2019) (Table 3).
The colour of the coprolites varied on the outside from brown to yellowish, and inside from pale brown to white (Fig. 4). The morphology of these pellets are coherent with
Chronology
Radiocarbon dating for LV coprolites achieved here conforms to a period from 37,890 to 6980 cal yr BP approximately (Table 2, Fig. 5, Fig. 6, Fig. 7, Fig. 8). Crocuta teeth give three radiocarbon dates of c. 43,004 (TLV2), 42,596 (TLV1) and 31,444 cal yr BP (TLV3) (Table 2). Dates on coprolites by Carrión et al. (2001) gave 12,780, and 10,871 cal yr BP, suggested that the coprolite collection would span a period of at least 1000 years at the transition between the Upper Pleistocene and the
Palynology and past vegetation
In LV, 8 out of 27 coprolite analysed samples contained pollen grains, and the corresponding pollen spectra were added to the 10 samples (LV1-LV10) reported by Carrión et al. (2001) (Fig. 5, Fig. 6, Fig. 8). The dominant pollen across all samples is that of Poaceae, Pinus, Artemisia, Quercus (evergreen and deciduous), and to a lesser extent, Asteraceae (Asteroideae and Cichorioideae), Juniperus, Amaranthaceae, Ephedra distachya, Plantago and Lamiaceae. Other taxa, generally below 2%, occur
Conclusions
It is clear that the use of radiocarbon dating of hyaena coprolites, or of bones of other carnivores where available, may be troublesome. It may be that the cortical cracks of coprolites and/or other post-depositional processes such as their exposure to the open air, movement into the cave or sedimentary context, may facilitate carbon contamination. Therefore in this study we relied on the organic contents for dating. Similarly, we do not know if this may involve pollen that is not contemporary
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (grant numbers CGL-BOS-2012-34717 and CGL-BOS 2015-68604), and Fundación Séneca (grant numbers 19434/PI/14 and 20788/PI/18). J.A. Riquelme, University of Córdoba, helped with sampling coprolites from Cueva de las Ventanas. We thank permission from Archaeological Museum of Granada for using coprolites from Carihuela Cave for pollen analysis and dating.
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2022, Review of Palaeobotany and PalynologyCitation Excerpt :The archaeobotanical record in cave and rock shelter sites provides materials from successive occupations in different periods of Prehistory, which can contribute to the reconstruction of landscapes and the vegetal resource exploitation strategies. Although the reliability of pollen analysis in cave records has been subjected to scepticism (Coûteaux, 1977; Turner and Hannon, 1988) due to taphonomic issues, many studies in recent decades have proved the relevance of these records, when taphonomically reliable, to reconstruct landscape and climate evolution in the sites' surroundings (Carrión et al., 1995, 1998, 1999, 2018; Navarro et al., 2001; Fernández et al., 2007; Djamali et al., 2011; Hunt and Fiacconi, 2018; Ochando et al., 2020c). It is therefore essential to consider the different processes and taphonomic agents involved in the formation of pollen records in this type of context.
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