126-10 Combining Magnetostratigraphy and Electron Spin Resonance: New insights from Spanish Archaeo-Paleontological Sites

Session: Geoarchaeology of Sites to Landscapes: Current Research on Long-Term Water and Soil Management and Maladaptation, Part II

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Abstract:

The oldest hominid migrations out of Africa into Europe is a controversial debate topic that has ignited heated arguments for several decades. A key issue is the reliability of the chronology of the archaeo-paleontological sites that document such migrations in the Pleistocene, which have typically been based on the use of paleomagnetism and trapped-charged methods such as electron spin resonance and luminescence, as well as terrestrial cosmogenic nuclides. Each method largely depends on the available material in the sediments as well as the expected age range. The combination of these geochronology methods allows comparing depositional versus burial ages: The paleomagnetic signal provides the record of the Earth’s magnetic field at the time the sediment was deposited. On the other hand, exposure and charge particles methods in environments such as caves and alluvial-lacustrine basins, provide the age of the last sunlight exposure of quartz or feldspar grains. Based on the magnetic polarity a given magnetostratigraphic sequence can be correlated to the reference geomagnetic polarity time scale, and if numerical age constraints are available, a numerical age of the strata can be then obtained for the studied sequence.The combination of these two methods has been proven to be an excellent approach to date or constrain the age of key archaeo-paleontological sites. We will discuss the results of such combination of trapped charged methods with magnetostratigraphy for key localities in Spain that hold a solid record of early human presence and hence contributing to the conundrum of the earliest human settlement in Europe.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-10975

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