Torralba and Ambrona (archaeological site)

Torralba and Ambrona (Province of Soria, Castile and León, Spain) are two paleontological and archaeological sites that correspond to various fossiliferous levels with Acheulean lithic industry (Lower Paleolithic) associated, at least about 350,000 years old (Ionian, Middle Pleistocene). The sites, traditionally studied together, are about 3 km distant, and belong to the settlements of Ambrona (municipality of Miño de Medinaceli) and Torralba del Moral (municipality of Medinaceli). From these sites have been obtained fossils of large mammals, mainly elephants (Straight-tusked elephant), with remains of nearly fifty individuals from each site, in addition to large bovines and horses. The sites can be seen as an elephants' graveyard, although the use of the term for a concentration of bones raises a problem of definition. The sites show evidence of successive occupations by human beings, who had a hunting station or, more likely, scavanged carrion and carried out quartering. Known since the end of the 19th century, they were excavated first by the Marquis of Cerralbo between 1909 and 1914, later, in the early '60s and early '80s, by the American Francis Clark Howell with the collaboration of the paleontologist Emiliano Aguirre and later, in the '90s, new campaigns were carried out by Manuel Santonja and Alfredo Pérez-González. The remains from the different excavations are scattered, mainly, between the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, the Museo Numantino de Soria and the museum in situ of Ambrona. They were declared Bien de Interés Cultural in the category of "archaeological zone" on September 7, 1995. They are also declared as "a place of international geological interest of international relevance" ("Geosite") by the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain, with the designations "VP -07: Loma del Saúco, Torralba" and "VP-07b: Loma de los Huesos, Ambrona", within the category "vertebrate sites of the Pliocene-Spanish Pleistocene".