Munibe Antropologia-Arkeologia (Jul 2019)
El desarrrollo de la investigación en los yacimientos Paleolíticos de Torralba y Ambrona (Soria, España) a partir de los diarios inéditos de Dolores Echaide
Abstract
tegrada en los equipos dirigidos por F. C. Howell en 1961-1963 y por Howell y L. G. Freeman en 1980-1983. Echaide contribuyó en cada campaña a la organización del trabajo e intervino de manera destacada en todos los procesos de excavación. La documentación elaborada por ella misma, recientemente depositada en el CENIEH, recoge numerosas observaciones que resultan esenciales para conocer en detallelas investigaciones realizadas en ambos yacimientos. El proyecto iniciado en 1961 en Torralba responde a los principios que habían comenzado a adoptarse en yacimientos paleolíticos del Este de África, aplicando un concepto antropológico y multidisciplinar a su interpretación. Las campañas en Torralba y Ambrona contaron lamentablemente con escasa participación española, reducida en el campo arqueológico prácticamente a Dolores Echaide, y tuvieron muy poca repercusión en el desarrollo en España de la investigación del Paleolítico antiguo. ____ The archaeologist Dolores Echaide (1928-2018) devoted much of her professional life to the excavation and research of the Acheulean sites of Torralba and Ambrona, integrated into the projects led by F. C. Howell in 1961-1963 and by Howell and L. G. Freeman in 1980-1983. Echaide contributed fundamentally in each field season in the organization of work teams. She participated outstandingly recording the lithic and bone remains, planning and carrying out the stratigraphic control of the excavation processes, especially in Ambrona. Her diaries, as well as other documents that she produced –all of them recently deposited in the CENIEH- collect many notes which provide detailed information about the investigations carried out in both sites. The project started in 1961 in Torralba responds to the same principles that researchers like Desmond Clark or Howell himself had begun to adopt in Palaeolithic East African sites, based on the application and interpretation of an anthropological and multidisciplinary concepts. These interventions opened a methodological line that is still valid today. However, the campaigns carried out in Torralba and Ambrona had unfortunately very little Spanish participation, almost exclusively reduced in the archaeological aspects to Dolores Echaide. The first phase (1961-63) had virtually no impact on the development of the research on the Lower Palaeolithic in Spain; in a later stage (1980-1983), despite the work in Ambrona being partially funded and supported by Hispanic entities, the integration of Spanish archaeology into the research of Ambrona was also still poor.
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