INTRODUCTION

The valley of the Sella River is home to one of the most important groupings of prehistoric sites in southwest Europe. In its caves and shelters, located mainly around the mouth of the river, but also in the valleys of its main tributaries, the Piloña and Gueña Rivers, settlements have been documented that span at least the last 200,000 years of human history in Asturias. This territory served as a habitat for both the Neanderthal groups (Homo neanderthalensis), creators of the Middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) industries, and the first modern humans (Homo sapiens), who produced the more recent industries of the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic.

The history of archaeological research in the Sella Valley has a long tradition dating back to the end of the 19th century, making it one of the oldest in southwest Europe. Since then, a large number of researchers have contributed to making the archaeological finds and the parietal art of the prehistoric sites of the Sella River known worldwide. 

This exhibition, financed by the Regional Ministry of Culture, Linguistic Policy and Sport of the Government of the Principality of Asturias, which is held at the Tito Bustillo Centro de Arte Rupestre, aims to take a look at the history of prehistoric research in the Sella Valley. It is centred on the men and women who have brought to light a small part of the remains that the hunter-gatherer-shellfish catcher groups left in this part of Asturias, applying the archaeological methods and techniques of the times, and who have also disseminated Asturian heritage internationally. 

On the one hand, it shows several summaries of the work carried out in this region from the end of the 19th century to the present day. To this end, different stages have been defined: early research, the work of Francisco Jordá Cerdá in the lower course of the Sella, the work carried out in the last two decades of the 20th century and in the last 25 years. Two cross-cutting aspects have also been incorporated that relate to the history of research into parietal art and the role played by women researchers in the study of prehistory in the region, respectively. Moreover, it includes the profiles of the main researchers who have carried out prehistoric studies in the Sella Valley for over 150 years.

 

1.    FIRST PREHISTORIC RESEARCH IN THE SELLA VALLEY (1836-1917)

Knowledge of the prehistory of the Sella basin began to appear in the 19th century, from the first scientific observations made by amateurs, antique dealers and collectors, to the work carried out by members of scientific societies, such as the Institute of Human Palaeontology in Paris and the Commission for Palaeontological and Prehistoric Research (CPPR).

The first references were written down by the mining engineer Guillermo Schulz. In his fieldwork, carried out between 1836 and 1943, he identified the Collera cave in Ribadesella, later known as San Antonio, where he found “antediluvial bones and many shells,” evidence of the subsistence activities of prehistoric human groups.

Archaeological collectors, especially Antonio Cortés, Frassinelli and Soto Cortés, carried out intensive activity in the area. The megalithic structures were their main object of interest, and removals were carried out in the dolmens of Santa Cruz, Mián and Abamia. Their learning enabled them to identify and interpret objects, but their lack of training prevented them from reading archaeological sites and their sedimentary deposits.

It was a similar story with the antiquarians Juan de Dios de la Rada and Arturo Malibrán, who were sent by the National Archaeological Museum and unsuccessfully visited Cuevona in 1869. It was not until 1886 that the industrial engineer Justo del Castillo, after identifying flint tools in Collubil (Amieva), located extensive remains of a prehistoric shell midden in the Cuevona de Ribadesella.

The first institutional work allowed Alcalde del Río, a prospector from the Institute of Human Palaeontology, to recognise the first example of cave paintings in the basin, a painted horse in the cave of San Antonio, in 1912. Between 1912 and 1917, members of the CPPR carried out extensive archaeological activity in the area: Hernández-Pacheco in the Ardines caves; Vega del Sella, after an excavation in the Santa Cruz dolmen and its surroundings, intervened in Collubil, la Cuevona and Buxu, the second cave found to have cave paintings in the basin; in 1915 Cabré identified paintings in the Santa Cruz dolmen.

With World War I and the subsequent political, economic and social situation in Spain, institutional research activity declined, putting an end to prehistoric research in the Sella basin, until its revival in the mid-1950s.

  • Figure 1. Guillermo Schulz. Portrait from the Iconoteca Asturiano-Universitaria.
  • Figure 2. Justo del Castillo y Quintana. Photo: Family archive.
  • Figure 3. From right to left: Eduardo Hernández Pacheco, Lucas Fernández Navarro and Hugo Obermaier at the MNCN, 1918. Photo: Sociedad Peñalara.
  • Figure 4. From left to right: Hugo Obermaier, Count of Vega del Sella, General Brunete y Lana, the journalist Juan Pujol and Ricardo de la Rosa, Civil Governor of the province of Oviedo. Photo: Archive of Hugo Obermaier.

 

2. RICARDO DUQUE DE ESTRADA Y MARTÍNEZ DE MORENTIN, 8th COUNT OF VEGA DEL SELLA (Pamplona, 1870 - Nueva de Llanes, 1941)

The Count of Vega del Sella graduated in law, although his true vocation was nature (zoology, botany, hunting, agriculture, etc.) and prehistoric archaeology, preferably Palaeolithic. Based in Nueva de Llanes, Oviedo and Madrid, he created an important library and carried out various patronage activities.

He held positions in scientific societies and boards of trustees, and some provincial and national political posts.

The Count's contact with Eduardo Hernández-Pacheco in 1911 was fortuitous, as he began unceasing work with the so-called Comisión de Investigaciones Paleontológicas y Prehistóricas (Commission for Palaeontological and Prehistoric Research). In the Sella basin between 1891 and 1917, he was involved in some way (discovery, excavation, cooperation, study) at the sites of the dolmen of Santa Crus de Cangas de Onís, Collubil, Ferrán, La Cuevona de Ardines and El Buxu. However, almost all his work in this basin was short-lived, although he performed an exhaustive study of the cave paintings of the Buxu Cave together with H. Obermaier (1877-1946).

The Count made extraordinary contributions to prehistoric research through his work at some emblematic sites in the council of Llanes, contributing significant conclusions related to the technique and method of archaeological excavation, which were published in the monographs of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios. He also established the Palaeolithic sequence in Asturias and, by extension, the Cantabrian region, and discovered that the cave paintings were sealed by a film of calcium carbonate, which proved their authenticity and helped to protect them. Vega del Sella had contacts with all the relevant people researching the Palaeolithic in Spain, France and Portugal.

  • Figure 1. Ricardo Duque de Estrada (Count of Vega del Sella), portrait by José Prado Norniella, 1928. Asturias Museum of Fine Arts.
  • Figure 2. Archaeological excavations in the Caves of Altamira, Cantabria, 1925. From left to right: Count of Vega del Sella, Henri Breuil, Count Bégouën and Hugo Obermaier.

 

3. EDUARDO HERNÁNDEZ-PACHECO Y ESTEVAN (Madrid, 1872 - Alcuéscar, Cáceres, 1965)

Eduardo Hernández-Pacheco y Estevan is an essential figure in the genesis and development of Spanish prehistoric studies throughout the first decades of the 20th century. These studies were carried out along two basic lines of action: the first was focused on the excavation of Palaeolithic sites in Asturias, and the second was related to protecting and studying the prehistoric artistic legacy of the Iberian Peninsula. 

His archaeological excavations were characterised by the importance given to stratigraphy as a basic method for the correct cultural identification of the Palaeolithic materials documented, as reflected in the work carried out in the caves of the Ardines massif (Ribadesella) between 1912 and 1915: the Río or La Lloseta cave, the Cuevona cave and the Viesca or Tenis cave. This attention to stratigraphy, together with the identification and comparative study of the marine malacological remains from the Ribadesella caves, allowed him to identify a climatic change between the end of the Upper Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic periods.

With regard to the study of prehistoric art, his work was characterised by the exhaustiveness of his techniques for documenting prehistoric symbols, and by his accurate analysis of stylistic parallels so as to correctly identify the cultures associated with the painted and engraved images at the Asturian sites: Peña Tú (Llanes) in 1913 and La Peña cave (Candamo) between 1914 and 1917. Years later, he would apply these same criteria to the study of Levantine art from sites in the centre, east and south of the Iberian Peninsula to help him assign a Mesolithic chronology to these representations.

  • Figure 1. Eduardo Hernández-Pacheco y Estevan. © Portrait collection of the Faculty of Geological Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid.
  • Figure 2. Archaeological excavations by Eduardo Hernández-Pacheco and Paul Wernet in the Cuevona de Ardines.

 

4. FRANCISCO JORDÁ CERDÁ (Alcoy, Alicante, 1914 – Salamanca, 2004)

Francisco Jordá Cerdá was an archaeologist and prehistorian from Alcoy who carried out his research and teaching work in Spain in the second half of the 20th century. Born between the “fathers of Prehistory”—whom he knew personally—and the current generations—whom he helped to educate—he is a point of reference in Spanish prehistory and archaeology. In Spain, he helped initiate modern archaeological practice, involving researchers from other fields of knowledge. His work was characterised by transdisciplinary research, which was always open to new ideas and experiences. His bold and much-critiqued hypotheses on the origin and chronology of post-Palaeolithic art in the Iberian Peninsula were confirmed by new discoveries, as were his opinions on the early origin of the Asturian forts. As for the Upper Palaeolithic, his work on the Solutrean is still indispensable. Removed from any dogmatism, his professional career and personal life were characterised by a certain heterodoxy and critical spirit that allowed him to produce original, independent work, free of ties.

After some difficult beginnings in the early years of the dictatorship due to his status as a republican, he arrived in Asturias in 1952 to direct the Archaeological Research Service of the Provincial Council of Asturias. In 1954, he became director of the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Oviedo, a post which he combined with teaching at the Women's Institute and at the University of Oviedo. He ended his teaching and research career as Professor of Prehistory at the University of Salamanca (1962-1984).

In Asturias, his work in the Sella Valley stands out. The site of La Cuevona (Ardines) was his first foray into the valley’s Palaeolithic caves after his arrival in Asturias. From that moment on, he worked constantly in the council of Ribadesella during the second half of the 1950s, with archaeological interventions in the Palaeolithic sites of the caves of La Lloseta (Ardines), Les Pedroses (El Carmen), Cova Rosa (Sardéu) and El Cierro (Fresnu), and at other minor sites. In addition, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he studied the Palaeolithic art of the Pozu'l Ramu cave, now known as the Tito Bustillo cave. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he returned to El Cierro and Cova Rosa, where he developed the most modern excavation techniques of the time, surrounded by a young multidisciplinary team, including his student Javier Fortea Pérez, future professor of Prehistory at the University of Oviedo. 

  • Figure 1. Francisco Jordá Cerdá, 1950s. Photo: Carmen Pardo.
  • Figure 2. From left to right: Luis Pericot, Henri Breuil, Juan B. Orcar, Henri Lothe and Fabrizio Mori at the symposium “Prehistoric Art of the Western Mediterranean and the Sahara,” Watenstein, Austria, 1950. Photo: Eduardo Ripoll.
  • Figure 3. From right to left, Antonio Álvarez Alonso, Francisco Jordá Cerdá and Manuel Mallo, 1965. Photo: Manuel Mallo Archive.
  • Figure 4. Archaeological excavations at Cova Rosa, 1974 campaign. In the centre, crouching, Socorro López Plaza and, to her right, Jesús F. Jordá Pardo. In the background, Francisco Jordá Cerda. Photo: Julián Bécares.

 

5. PREHISTORIC RESEARCH IN THE SELLA VALLEY (1968-1998)

The discovery of Pozu'l Ramu in 1968 revitalised scientific research. However, this research was slow to take place, as the Provincial Council prioritised the development of the cave's tourism potential to turn it into the “Altamira of Asturias.” Thus, in order to safeguard its investments and avoid the tutelage of the Ministry of Education and Science, it set up the Fundación Pública de Cuevas in 1970. In order to control research, two years after the discovery, the foundation commissioned Miguel Ángel García Guinea and Magín Berenguer to carry out the fieldwork, but their work was short-lived. 

In 1972, the excavations were entrusted to Alfonso Moure Romanillo, a young and experienced prehistorian from Santander, who was a collaborator of the General Commission of Archaeological Excavations and professor in the Department of Prehistory at Complutense University, both directed by Martín Almagro Basch, professor of Prehistory and director of the National Archaeological Museum. Moure and his team organised an advanced interdisciplinary research project that carried out a comprehensive study of living spaces and artistic manifestations. 

This allowed for a rigorous reconstruction of the life of the valley’s ancient inhabitants and turned Tito Bustillo into a training centre for a generation of specialists who were to become the leading figures in research in the following decades. At the same time, the discovery of the Los Azules site in 1971 and the campaigns at Cova Rosa, El Cierro and El Buxu enriched knowledge about the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic in the region.

The growth of archaeological activity brought with it an increased awareness of heritage conservation. Prehistorians have been warning since the mid-1970s that the abusive commercial exploitation of caves would lead to the disappearance of cave paintings. Governments reacted and promoted conservation actions in important sites such as the Peña de Candamo cave, among others. 

The mid-1980s saw the transfer of powers to the Principality of Asturias and the dissolution of the old bureaucratic structures. Despite the scarcity of resources and political instability, the results from this period were outstanding, consolidating the Sella as one of the most important prehistoric regions in the Iberian Peninsula. The institutionalisation and development of research at different Spanish universities allowed studies to multiply, and the regional administration promoted innovative proposals such as the Tito Bustillo Educational Classrooms, bringing this historical cycle of Palaeolithic scientific research to a close on the threshold of the 21st century.

  • Figure 1. Archaeological excavations in the Living Area of the Tito Bustillo cave, 1974 campaign. From left to right: Carmen Cacho, Teresa Chapa, Federico Bernaldo de Quirós, María Isabel Martínez Navarrete, Mercedes Cano, Victoria Cabrera and K. Flataker. Standing: Alfonso Moure and Pedro Saura. Photo: Moure-Ortega Archive.
  • Figure 2. Documentation by Alfonso Moure and Rodrigo de Balbín of the Great Panel of the Tito Bustillo Cave. Photo: Moure-Ortega Archive.
  • Figure 3. Photographic record by Julián Bécares of the archaeological excavations at Cova Rosa. Photo: Alejandro Gómez Fuentes.
  • Figure 4. Excavation team from the 1991 campaign at the La Güelga cave, where Alberto Martínez Villa and José Manuel Quesada can be recognised. Photo courtesy of Alberto Martínez Villa.

 

6. Manuel Mallo Viesca (Avilés, 1934) 

A collaborator of Francisco Jordá Cerdá since his time in Asturias, with whom he forged a great friendship; their relationship lasted until his death. This relationship led him to explore caves in the Nalón, Nora, Narcea and Sella basins, to review the state of well-known archaeological sites and to perform reconnaissance on Asturian beaches in search of archaeological remains. Well-versed on every important find in Asturias in the sixties and very experienced in field work, he was the one who notified his friend of the importance of the Las Caldas cave site, the open-air site of Bañugues and the caves with post-Palaeolithic art in Fresnedo (Teverga). In addition, together they studied the paintings and engravings of Les Pedroses, in the Sella Valley, whose publication appeared belatedly.

In the late 1960s, he was one of the most skilled and competent archaeologists available in Asturias. He carried out his research in the Sección de Estudios Históricos Avilesinos, of which he was in charge, and in the Grupo de Exploraciones Subterráneas de Asturias, which was the caving section of the Asturian Mountaineering Federation, where he acted as “archaeological advisor.” It is therefore not surprising that he was part of the group of speleologists who carried out the first explorations in the Pozu'l Ramu karst complex (present-day Tito Bustillo) a few days after its discovery and accompanied F. Jordá Cerdá almost a year later. 

  • Figure 1. Manuel Mallo. Photo: Manuel Mallo Archive.
  • Figure 2. Manuel Mallo Viesca during the Jornadas Espeleológicas Asturianas, Ribadesella,1968. Photo: Manuel Mallo Archive.

 

7. MIGUEL ÁNGEL GARCÍA GUINEA (Alceda, 1922 – Mompía, 2012)

Miguel Ángel García Guinea was one of the most renowned figures in Spanish archaeology in the 20th century, and was particularly recognised for his work as a researcher, cultural manager and disseminator of heritage.

His career in archaeology was characterised by the chronological and geographical breadth of his research. On the Peninsula, he directed more than forty excavation campaigns. Although most of his fieldwork focused on historical sites, he was no stranger to prehistory. He directed archaeological excavations in different caves in Cantabria, including La Chora, El Otero and Cualventi.

As far as research in the Sella Valley is concerned, he carried out a single excavation campaign in the Tito Bustillo cave in 1970. He intervened in two areas, in the Living Area, near the old entrance to the cave, now collapsed by a landslide, and in the Decoration Area, under the Main Panel. In both areas he documented different occupations ascribed to the Magdalenian period.

The continuity of archaeological work in the cave was truncated for various reasons, including institutional tensions with the Patronato de Cuevas y Yacimientos Prehistóricos y Protohistóricos de Asturias (Asturias Caves and Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sites Board). The publication of the archaeological work from the only excavation campaign he carried out with the collaboration of Carolina Fuentes, Manuel Meijide and Benito Madariaga, became an essential reference for subsequent research carried out in the cave.

  • Figure 1. Miguel Ángel García Guinea. Photo: Sautuola Institute (Santander).
  • Figure 2. Miguel A. García Guinea and his team during the 1970 campaign in the Tito Bustillo Cave.

 

8. MAGIN BERENGUER ALONSO (Oviedo, Asturias, 1918-2000)

An artist by training, regional civil servant and professor at the Oviedo School of Arts and Crafts. He has been a member of the German Archaeological Institute for the Iberian Peninsula since 1955, a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando since 1958 and a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of History since 1993.

As head of the Artistic Catalogue of Asturias, between 1954 and 1957 he reproduced the cave paintings from several Asturian caves, including, within the Sella basin, El Buxu and Les Pedroses. After the discovery of Tito Bustillo, between 1969 and 1972 he documented and published several of its cave paintings, including some unpublished ones, such as the Gallery of the Horses or the animal figures which were later known as Group I. As a result of this work, his archive contains notes on different types of media and tracings of detailed photographs, made on tracing paper in ink or charcoal, as well as some experimental tests on plaster.

In an era in which regional administrations had more and more responsibility for cultural heritage without having the necessary resources or personnel, the history of the management and research of cave paintings in Asturias, in general, and of Tito Bustillo, in particular, is inseparable from Magín Berenguer’s activity during the more than fifty years of his professional career.

  • Figure 1. Magín Berenguer Alonso. Photo: Frente de Afirmación Hispánica A. C. 
  • Figure 2. Magín Berenguer and Aurelio Capín Alonso in the Main Panel of the Tito Bustillo Cave, 1970. Photo: Personal archive of the Berenguer Diez family

 

9. J. ALFONSO MOURE ROMANILLO (Santander, 1949 – Santander, 2023)

Professor of prehistory at the University of Cantabria, Alfonso Moure Romanillo was a leading figure in the research and dissemination of Spanish prehistory.

His research focused on the Palaeolithic and his contributions played a fundamental role in the conceptual and methodological overhaul to Spanish prehistory in the 1970s and 1980s. The research that he directed during those two decades in the Tito Bustillo Cave was an important part of this shift. Thus, from 1972 to 1986, he carried out archaeological excavations in the Living Area, near the old entrance to the cave, and in 1984, in the Decoration Area, under the Main Panel. Tito Bustillo was a true school of field archaeology, where many of the leading specialists in the field in the last years of the 20th century were trained. 

To carry out his research in the cave, A. Moure brought together an exemplary interdisciplinary group that included Jesús Altuna, Anaïs Boyer-Klein, Maria Dolores Garralda and Benito Madariaga de la Campa, who were later joined by Rodrigo de Balbín, in this case, to study parietal art.

Thus, A. Moure's fieldwork in the cave was not limited to excavation, as he also carried out intensive research on the parietal art in Tito Bustillo, contributing to the enhancement of its rich heritage and to the inclusion of this cave on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008. 

  • Figure 1. Alfonso Moure Romanillo. Photo: Moure-Ortega Archive.
  • Figure 2. Archaeological excavations in the Living Area of the Tito Bustillo cave, 1974 campaign. From left to right: Victoria Cabrera, Mercedes Cano and Alfonso Moure. Photo: Pedro Saura.

 

10. Emilio Olávarri Goicochea (Bilbao, 1929 – Oviedo, 2002) 

Interested in biblical studies, Emilo Olavarri completed his undergraduate thesis in Oriental Archaeology at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem and his doctorate in Theology at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. A specialist in Near Eastern archaeology, his research focused on the Old City of Jerusalem, Jordan and Syria. 

He was a professor at the Metropolitan Seminary of Oviedo between 1956 and 1999, Magistral Canon of Oviedo Cathedral and was responsible for setting up the current Church Museum of Oviedo Cathedral, of which he was the first director; he combined these activities with his archaeological work in the East and in Asturias. He was director of the Caves and Prehistoric Sites Service of the Provincial Council of Asturias (1970-1980)—the successor to the Archaeological Research Service—where he excavated different prehistoric sites and historic monuments in Asturias, applying the methodology he practised in the Near East. 

His intervention in the Sella Valley was limited to excavating the El Buxu cave in 1970, where he carried out several test bores and recognised the existence of Palaeolithic levels from the Solutrean, whose materials were studied years later by a young Mario Menéndez in his degree thesis, documenting a bird sculpture made on a tusk of Ursus spelaeus which is certainly the oldest representation of three-dimensional sculpture in the prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula.

  • Figure 1. Emilio Olávarri. Photo courtesy of Lorenzo Arias.
  • Figure 2. Emilio Olávarri and Lorenzo Arias at the excavation of Santa María del Naranco, 1985 campaign. Photo: Lorenzo Arias.
  • Figure 3. Emilio Olávarri.

 

11. ALEJANDRO GÓMEZ FUENTES (Salamanca, 1944)

Alejandro Gómez Fuentes was a researcher and lecturer in what is now the Department of Prehistory, Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Salamanca.

From his early years as a researcher, and as part of his doctoral thesis, he was actively involved in the archaeological excavations carried out in the caves of Cova Rosa and El Cierro, co-directing these interventions with Francisco Jordá Cerdá and approaching the study of the archaeological materials from an economic and social perspective. 

In the case of Cova Rosa, he carried out excavations in the area of the cave shelter between 1975 and 1979, applying an innovative comprehensive excavation method designed by Javier Fortea. With this method, he tried to understand the economic forms that could be interpreted from the room floors and living floors documented in the cave’s excavation process.

He worked in the El Cierro cave between 1976 and 1979. Here, he carried out a survey in what is now known as the Outer Closed Depression and he performed cleaning and excavation in the northern section of the main site. The intervention in this part of the cavity made it possible to document one of the most important sequences of peninsular prehistory, given that it spans from the end of the Mousterian period to the historic period. Thirty-five years after the last intervention, in 2014 he returned to the site with Esteban Álvarez Fernández, who would later take charge of resuming research in the cavity. 

  • Figure 1: Alejandro Gómez Fuentes. Photo courtesy of the researcher.
  • Figure 2. Archaeological excavations at Cova Rosa. On the left, Alejandro Gómez Fuentes; on the right, Jesús F. Jordá Pardo. Photo: Julián Bécares.

 

12. RESEARCH IN THE SHELL MIDDENS OF THE LOWER SELLA

Interest in Asturian shell middens began very early in the Sella Valley, first by Justo del Castillo y Quintana and later by the Count of Vega del Sella.
It was not until the second decade of the 20th century that studies were resumed, thanks in particular to the work of three researchers: Geoffrey Clark, Manuel Ramón González Morales and Miguel Ángel Fano Martínez. All three wrote their doctoral theses on Mesolithic settlements in the Cantabrian region, in which they wrote about new sites in caves located in the Lower Sella. 

Geoffrey A. Clark (1944), professor at Arizona State University, carried out sampling in the late 1960s at the La Lloseta, El Cierro, Les Pedroses, San Antonio and Tito Bustillo shell middens, as well as the first carbon-14 dating in the region, which allowed him to confirm the post-Palaeolithic chronology of the Asturian record.

In the 1970s, Manuel R. González Morales (1950), from the University of Oviedo, prospected and catalogued different shell middens in the caves of Ceñil, Junco, El Molino, Cuetu de la Hoz and La Molera. His critical view of the post-Asturian chronological dating of some sites was of great interest.
In the second half of the nineties, Miguel Ángel Fano (1969 – 2024), from the University of Salamanca, contributed to the discovery of shell middens in the caves of Bones, La Viesca and El Cementerio.

  • Figure 1. Geoffrey A. Clark, in the centre, showing the ancient mouth of the Tito Bustillo Cave, 1969. On the right, Matilde Escortell; on the left, Valerie A. Jackson. Photo: Manuel Mallo.
  • Figure 2. From left to right, Geoffrey A. Clark, Juan A. Fernández-Tresguerres and Manuel R. González Morales during the archaeological excavation in the Los Azules cave, 1973 or 1974 campaign. Photo: Manuel R. González Morales
  • Figure 3. Miguel Ángel Fano Martínez and Carlos Duarte Simoes sampling the Cantabrian shell midden of Hoyo Laredo, 2022 campaign. Photo: A. León.

 

13. Francisco Javier Fortea Pérez (Arnedo, La Rioja 1946 – Oviedo, Asturias, 2009) 

A disciple of Francisco Jordá Cerdá at the University of Salamanca, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree and doctorate, he was a lecturer at this university (1968-1978) and assistant lecturer in ethnology and prehistory (1978-1981), and later professor of prehistory at the University of Oviedo (1981-2009). 

His early years of research focused on sites in Andalusia and the eastern Mediterranean, specialising in the archaeology of the Upper Palaeolithic, Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic periods, as well as prehistoric art. The discovery in 1978 of the La Viña site (Oviedo) led him to definitively settle in Asturias, where he focused his main archaeological activity on the Nalón basin and the Casaño-Cares-Deva axis. 

His scientific career in Asturias began along with his teacher in the excavations at Cova Rosa and in the research at Tito Bustillo, and continued in the 1990s with his attempt to date Asturian Palaeolithic art directly, which proved unsuccessful in the Sella caves he analysed (El Buxu and Tito Bustillo).

However, his main activity in the Sella Valley was focused on the Neanderthal site of El Sidrón, located in the basin of its tributary, the Piloña River, which he excavated together with Marco de la Rasilla from 2000 until his death. In this cave he coordinated a large multidisciplinary team that has explored one of the most important Neanderthal sites in the world. At this site, they developed a specific methodology for extracting human fossils and correlating them with the existing lithic industry, researching the geological and chrono-cultural context and studying the site's cave paintings. 

  • Figure 1: Javier Fortea in the excavation of the Sidrón cave, 2006 campaign. Photo: El Sidrón research team.
  • Figure 2: El Sidrón cave work team, 2007 campaign. From the bottom up: J. Fortea, Aurora Rodríguez, Araceli Soto, Zorione Torrontegui, David Santamaría, Ignacio Barandiarán, Ana Cava, Elsa Duarte, M. de la Rasilla, Enrique Martínez, Jose Mª Vázquez, Lucía Martínez and Juan Trenor. Photo: El Sidrón research team.

 

14. JUAN ANTONIO FERNÁNDEZ-TRESGUERRES VELASCO (Mieres, 1941 - Oviedo, 2011)

Juan Antonio Fernández-Tresguerres was a lecturer and researcher in the History Department at the University of Oviedo. His life was profoundly shaped by his membership in the Dominican Order.

His research focused on two main areas: Near Eastern archaeology, for which he conducted excavations in Palestine (Tell el-Far'ah) and Jordan (Khirbet Samra and Jebel Mutawwaq); and the excavation of Los Azules cave, one of the most significant late Palaeolithic sites in the middle valley of the River Sella. 

Juan A. Fernández-Tresguerres worked at Los Azules from 1973 to 1992 on projects commissioned by Martín Almagro Basch, who was the National Commissioner for Excavations at the time. These excavations provided training for a large number of Spanish prehistorians, some of whom went on to take part in later archaeological projects in the Sella Valley, including Carlos Pérez Suárez, Pablo Arias and Alberto Martínez-Villa.

The excavation at Los Azules cave is, to date, the prehistoric site in Asturias where the most continuous annual campaigns have taken place. Within the cave, he documented the most significant Azilian sequence in the Cantabrian region, as well as one of the region’s few prehistoric tombs discovered in its original location. The central aim of Juan A. Fernández-Tresguerres’ research was to gain a deeper understanding of Azilian groups by examining various aspects of their lives, including their industries, economy, spirituality and art, as well as their relationship with prehistoric landscapes.

  • Figure 1. Juan Antonio Fernández-Tresguerres Velasco in Los Azules cave. Photo: Manuel R. González Morales.
  • Figure 2. Detail of the Azilian burial site documented during the Azilian excavations at Los Azules cave. Photo: Juan A. Fernández-Tresguerres.

 

15. Mario Menéndez Fernández (Belmonte de Miranda, 1954) 

This Asturian prehistorian began studying the first cycle of the bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Oviedo before graduating with a specialisation in Archaeology from the Autonomous University of Madrid in 1980. Under the tutelage of Emilio Olávarri, he returned to Asturias to prepare a thesis on the cave of El Buxu—which he defended in 1982 and published in 1984—and, after a brief contract at the Archaeological Museum of Asturias, he moved to Madrid as a lecturer-tutor of prehistory at the UNED (1982/83). In 1987 he defended his doctoral thesis and, in the same year, he joined the Department of Prehistory at the UCM as a lecturer, where he remained from 1987 to 1993, the year in which he obtained a post as professor at the UNED, where he became a tenured professor in 2018. In addition, between 2002 and 2014 he directed the UNED’s Associate Centre in Asturias.

His archaeological activity in the Sella Valley was mainly concentrated in Cangas de Onís, specifically in the caves of El Buxu and La Güelga. At El Buxu he directed four campaigns between 1986 and 1989, and in 2016 he coordinated a comprehensive monograph on the site and its parietal art. At La Güelga he directed excavations, first between 1989 and 1992 in zone A (Magdalenian settlements), and years later, between 1999 and 2010, mainly in zone D, where he worked in two sectors (interior and exterior) with the Mousterian, Aurignacian and Châtelperronian levels; this site is one of the main references for the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in the Cantabrian region.

  • Figure 1. Mario Menendez Fernández (Photo courtesy of the researcher).
  • Figure 2. Archaeological excavations in La Güelga cave, 2012 campaign (Photo courtesy of Mario Menéndez).

 

16. RODRIGO DE BALBÍN BEHRMANN (Madrid, 1946)

Rodrigo de Balbín is one of Spain's leading researchers in the study of prehistoric art.

Between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, he was part of the project to document the parietal art in the Tito Bustillo Cave, which was begun years earlier by Alfonso Moure Romanillo. Here he developed the first data sheet to standardise the descriptions of the graphic record that would later be used to document Spanish Palaeolithic caves. He also made systematic use of photography as a scientific tool for the study of prehistoric art. In 1998 Rodrigo de Balbín and his team based at the University of Alcalá returned to Tito Bustillo to continue the study of its artistic manifestations. They also reviewed those of other caves located in the lower course of the Sella, in particular, La Lloseta and San Antonio, where they discovered new parietal manifestations. His research focused on analysing the caves from an integral perspective, conceiving them as spaces in which art is related to a variety of activities carried out by human groups within the karst.

In this sense, in addition to carrying out studies of the parietal art, between 2001 and 2007 R. de Balbín and his team carried out archaeological excavations and surveys in different areas of the Tito Bustillo Cave (Vestíbulo, Cuevina, Coxu, etc.), but also in La Cuevona de Ardines and in the Galería del Tránsito of La Lloseta.

  • Figure 1. Rodrigo de Balbín Behrmann. Photo courtesy of the researcher.
  • Figure 2. Archaeological excavations in the “Cuevina Survey” of the Tito Bustillo Cave, 2007 campaign. Photo: Rodrigo de Balbín.

 

17. RESEARCH IN THE SELLA VALLEY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

In the last 25 years there has been a real revival in studies on hunter-gatherer-shellfish catcher groups in the Sella Valley. 

The archaeological interventions have been directed by different universities (Salamanca, UNED, Oviedo, Cantabria, the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Complutense University of Madrid) and research centres (CSIC and Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi). 

In the lower course of the Sella, excavations have been carried out in Cova Rosa and El Cierro (northern section of the main site and the Nativity room) by a team supervised by Esteban Álvarez Fernández and Jesús F. Jordá Pardo; in Les Pedroses and La Lloseta, by Alberto Martínez Villa; and in different areas of the Tito Bustillo Cave (excavations by Esteban Álvarez Fernández, Marián Cueto and Jesús Tapia in the Living Area; by Rodrigo del Balbín’s team in Coxu, Cuevina and Covacha exterior, etc.). In the middle course of the Sella, Mario Menéndez's team has carried out excavations at La Güelga, and David Álvarez Alonso's team at Los Azules. Interventions have also been carried out in El Sidrón (Piloña River valley) by the team led first by Javier Fortea and later by Marco de la Rasilla, and by Ana Pinto in Sopeña (Güeña River valley). In the upper course of the Sella River, José Manuel Quesada has worked in the Collubil cave.

Specific research on parietal art has also abounded. This includes studies by Rodrigo de Balbín's team in the Lower Sella (for example, in Tito Bustillo), as well as the discovery of parietal art in El Sidrón. In the last decade, two doctoral candidates at the UNED defended their doctoral theses: Beatriz García Alonso, on the pigments of the El Buxu cave, and Alberto Martínez-Villa, who reviewed the known parietal manifestations in the Sella Valley and included new stations (La Viesca and Pruneda).

Finally, other archaeological interventions have been carried out, including surveys (for example, in different caves located in the Alto Gueña by Ana Pinto) and prospecting (in particular, by Javier Fernández Yrigoyen in the terraces of the lower and middle courses of the Sella River), as well as sampling (shells, ochre, etc.) in a considerable number of caves with the aim of carrying out specific studies on chronology, seasonality, etc.

  • Figure 1. Jesús Tapia and Jesús F. Jordá Pardo sampling the sediments of the Living Area of the Tito Bustillo Cave, 2022 campaign. Photo: Luis Teira.
  • Figure 2. Archaeological excavations in the Nativity Room of the El Cierro cave, 2022 campaign. Photo: Jesús F. Jordá Pardo.
  • Figure 3. Archaeological excavations in the Güelga cave, 2012 campaign. Photo courtesy of Mario Menéndez.
  • Figure 4. Archaeological excavations in the El Sidrón cave, 2012 campaign. Photo courtesy of Nel Acebal.

 

20. Women’s Contributions in the Sella

Research on Palaeolithic and Mesolithic hunter-gatherer groups has a long history that stretches back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, women researchers were virtually absent from this early stage. Archaeological discoveries and excavations in the 1970s marked the beginning of women researchers’ involvement. The references available indicate that numerous women were involved in the Torreblanca Mountain Group that explored the Tito Bustillo Cave in 1968. Various women researchers who were collaborators in the excavations directed by Francisco Jordá in Cova Rosa went on to carry out prolific scientific activity in the study of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer societies. 

The role of the women researchers was especially relevant in the study of archaeological materials from the excavations that took place in the area around the Sella and which were deposited in different centres, such as the Archaeological Museum of Asturias and the National Museum of Natural Sciences. Between 1970 and 1990, the archaeological materials from La Cuevona, the Ardines River Cave, Tito Bustillo, El Cierro, Cova Rosa and La Lloseta were the subject of various academic works (degree dissertations and doctoral theses) and specific scientific publications, dealing, among other topics, with the lithic and bone industry and dyes. This trend continued in the 1990s, when analyses of the malacological, ichthyological, paleoanthropological and archaeozoological remains from such emblematic sites as Tito Bustillo were studied and published.

The prominent role of women researchers in the study and review of materials is not reflected by who was leading the archaeological interventions. Excavations in caves such as Tito Bustillo (1970s and in the present) and Sopeña have been effectively directed by women. 

As a general trend, the scientific activity carried out by women researchers has focused on the systematic study of archaeological materials from the Pleistocene. In recent years, the consolidation of interdisciplinary research teams has seen the participation of a large number of women researchers who are studying a variety of aspects (geological, etc.), contributing relevant information to reconstruct the lifestyles of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. On the other hand, there has been less research activity focused on studying hunter-gatherer groups from the Holocene, given the lower archaeological visibility of these periods of prehistory. 

  • Figure 1. Archaeological excavations at Cova Rosa, 1975 campaign. Seated in the centre of the working group, Pilar Utrilla Miranda and Socorro López Plaza can be recognised, as well as Francisco Jordá Cerdá, Julián Bécares and Jesús F. Jordá Pardo. Photo: Javier Fortea.
  • Figure 2. Marián Cueto and Esteban Álvarez Fernández in the archaeological excavations at the Tito Bustillo Living Area, 2020 campaign. Photo: Luis Teira.
  • Figure 3. Ana C. Llona at the archaeological excavations in the Sopeña cave, 2015 campaign. Photo courtesy of the researcher.