Open air

Open air. Valle de las Orquídeas, Hundidero, Hotel California...

One of the things that make the Sierra de Atapuerca such a magical place is that the sites allow us to build up a diachronic reconstruction of the lives of the prehistoric groups that frequented the area, thanks to the presence of almost the entire chrono-cultural sequence. Work has been underway ever since the start of excavations in the caves, an unquestionably magnificent document of the episodes that happened there, however we soon realised that we would have to move outside as well. We now know that these groups intensified their activities in the open air- in the environs around the hills where they provided themselves with game, fruit, vegetables, raw materials and water.

Since 1999, a team from Burgos University has been working in a radius of 10 km around Cueva Mayor in order to document the open air settlements. They have surveyed not just the Sierra de Atapuerca but also 17 surrounding municipalities including Ibeas de Juarros, Arlanzón, Atapuerca, Castrillo del Val, Quintanapalla and Rubena. These studies have found 181 prehistoric archaeological sites, and the work has enabled over one hundred prehistoric points to be detected.

We have discovered places where they hunted, carved, sowed and lived. The importance of this research is that it supplements the work in the caves, documenting every single point that was frequented in order to sketch a complete picture of the territory that was inhabited and exploited by these groups.

One magnificent example of open air settlements is Valle de las Orquídeas (Orchid Valley). Two digging seasons have revealed that it was a strategic site beside a doline, that it contained water where animals came to drink, as well as containing raw material used to produce stone tools. In the future, the detailed study of every site will provide information about the spatial articulation of these societies, both diachronically and synchronically.

Two more open air sites have been dug in recent seasons: Hundidero y Hotel California.