The Emiliano Aguirre Research Center also houses the archive, a space dedicated to preserving all non-bibliographic materials related to the memory of Atapuerca.
Since 2018, work has been carried out on the documentary collection of Emiliano Aguirre. In addition, the Foundation received the collections of Eudald Carbonell and José María Bermúdez de Castro in February 2025. Among these documents, only part of the Atapuerca dissertations and academic works—such as dissertations and master’s theses (TFM)—supervised by them between 1984 and 2025 have so far been catalogued.
The Foundation has also received the personal and scientific archive of José Manuel Cerdá López (1946–2001), a key figure in the cultural and scientific promotion of the Sierra de Atapuerca.
Emiliano Aguirre Documentary Collection
The scientific archive of Emiliano Aguirre was transferred to the Atapuerca Foundation in 2018. This was the result of an agreement between the Atapuerca Foundation and the Emiliano Aguirre Paleontological Foundation, owner of the collection, for its preservation, cataloguing, and dissemination.
The work of preservation, cataloguing, and dissemination is carried out thanks to the support of the Círculo Burgos and Ibercaja Foundations.
This documentary collection of the “father of Atapuerca” consists of a vast array of academic and scientific materials, which are currently being catalogued. Among the documents that will be made available through the Atapuerca Foundation’s website are letters, telegrams, press clippings, handwritten originals, corrected typescripts, doctoral theses, teaching materials, scientific articles and conference papers, as well as field notebooks from various sites such as the 1963 Nubian archaeological mission, studies of bone materials in Kenya and South Africa in 1968, notes from the study of East African hominids in 1977, and field notebooks from Spanish sites such as Gándaras de Budiño (Pontevedra) and Torralba and Ambrona (Soria) in the 1960s, as well as the notebooks and excavation diaries from Atapuerca (Burgos) spanning 1978 to 1990.
Reflecting his other passion—painting—preserved materials also include highly detailed drawings for Natural Sciences classes at the Complutense University of Madrid, zoology drawings from 1952 and 1953, bird sketches and notes from 1954, life sketches of African ethnic dances from the 1960s, and several caricatures of Spanish, European, and American paleontologists from the 1950s and 1960s.