30 years of digs
In 1990, Emiliano retired and passed the baton on to the current team of co-directors, Juan Luis Arsuaga, José Mª Bermúdez de Castro and Eudald Carbonell. This marked the start of a decade during which a chain of discoveries made Atapuerca an essential reference point for Peninsular and European prehistory.
The most important events were probably the discovery of stone tool industry at a 900,000 year old level of Gran Dolina; the discovery of several Homo heidelbergensis skulls in 1992, dubbed with names like Agamemnon and Miguelón, which led to the recognition of Sima de los Huesos as one of Europe’s most important palaeontological sites; the 1994 discovery at Gran Dolina Level 6 of remains from a new species, Homo antecessor, which supplied proof that 800,000 years ago, small groups of people inhabited this area and practised cannibalism.
Sima del Elefante (Elephant Pit) surprised the scientific community with a stone item in a 1,200,000 year-old stratum, discovered during the 1999 digging season, when work began on a new site, Cueva del Mirador (Lookout Cave). In the early years of the current decade, new digs were begun in Portalón de Cueva Mayor (Main Cave Porch) and Valle de las Orquídeas (Orchid Valley). Work has now begun on more open air sites- Hundidero and Hotel California. During the digging season every summer, our teams can be found at eight different points: Sima del Elefante, Galería, Gran Dolina, Portalón de Cueva Mayor, Sima de los Huesos, Cueva del Mirador, Hotel California and the sediment washing facility beside the Arlanzón River.
Thirty annual excavation seasons have passed, and the Atapuerca Research Team is constantly growing, becoming more professionalised and contributing more relevant data for the study of human evolution. The duration of each season’s fieldwork has been extended to two months, the number of doctoral and honours theses are multiplying, while articles published in major national and international journals abound. Our team is working hard on both the research and the promotional aspects of the Atapuerca Project.
