Figure 1.
Geographical location of the Galería site within the abandoned railway trench at Atapuerca, Spain.
The plan view of the Galería karstic complex shows the three conduits (Zarpazos: TZ, Galería: TG, and Tres Simas norte: TN) that have contributed to the infilling of the cavity.
Figure 2.
Stratigraphic sequence of the cave deposits at Galería Complex.
(a) Ages/sample positions of teeth previously dated by combined ESR/U-series [15] and ages/sample positions of speleothem samples previously dated using U-series and/or ESR [11], [15], [104]. (b) Location of the luminescence dating samples and ages obtained in this study. Legend: (1) Cretaceous limestone; (2) Speleothem; (3) Main stratigraphic uncomformity – allostratigraphic unit (e.g., GII); (4) Lithologic/archaeo-palaeontological level (e.g., TG7); (5) Palaeomagnetic reversal; (6) Zarpazos – tentative GIa/GIb boundary; (7) Soil; (8) Clayey silt/small gravel boundary; (9) Gravels/breccia boundary; (10) Limestone clasts and boulders; (11) Organomineral layer (includes bat guano); (12) U-series and/or ESR speleothem samples; (13) ESR/U-series teeth samples; (14) Luminescence samples (this study).
Table 1.
Allostratigraphic units and lithological levels (same nomenclature used to describe archaeo-palaeontological levels) for Galería, together with the position of the luminescence dating samples analysed in this study.
Table 2.
Final luminescence ages obtained for the Galería samples in this study.
Figure 3.
Photos showing the location of the luminescence dating samples and the types of deposits investigated at Galería.
(a) and (c) show the sampling positions in unit GIII; (b) shows the stratigraphic sequence sampled at Covacha Zarpazos (northern wall); (d) sampling of the upper guano in unit GIIa (level TN2A); (e) and (f) shows sampling of the lower part of unit GIIa (level TG7).
Table 3.
Environmental dose rate values for the quartz and K-feldspar fractions measured in this study.
Table 4.
SAR protocols used in this study to obtain ages from quartz (protocol A) and K-feldspars (protocol B).
Figure 4.
Selected examples of dose-response curves and signal decay curves.
(a-d) TT-OSL single-grain measurements and (e-f) pIR-IR225 measurements of the Galería samples.
Table 5.
Summary of single-grain TT-OSL and multi-grain pIR-IR225 De values for the Galería samples.
Figure 5.
Examples of single-grain TT-OSL De distributions plotted as histograms (logarithmic x-axis) and radial plots.
Data is shown for selected Galería samples. See Figure S4 in File S1 for the De datasets of all other samples.
Figure 6.
Radial plots showing pIR-IR225 De distributions of representative Galería samples.
See Figure S5 in File S1 for the De datasets of all other samples.
Figure 7.
Published ages obtained using different dating methods (including this study) for the various allostratigraphic units and lithologic/archaeo-palaeontological levels at Galería.
The data included here has been derived from combined ESR/U-series dating of teeth [15], TL and IRSL dating of sediment [14], ESR dating of calcite/speleothems [11], [104], U-series dating of calcite/speleothems [11], [15]. The numerical age estimates are shown against the Marine Oxygen Isotope curve record [94]. Two additional TL ages of 1340±170 ka (unit GIV) and 3000±1800 ka (unit GI) [14] are not shown on this plot as they lie beyond the x-axis limits (see Table 2 for a full summary of the dataset in [14]).