SOUTHERN MEDITERRANEAN COAST, GUADALQUIVIR RIVER AND BETIC INTRAMONTANE BASINS 463 habitat and the procurement area. Inhabitants of Cueva del Angel made an extraordinary use of small tools as flakes, also typologically diverse si- descrapers were common. In the future, further dating of levels with lithic industry on fluvial ter- races as well as Acheulean levels in caves, will help to ascertain the relationship between both con- texts. At the moment, the reference sites that can be compared with Cueva del Angel are Galería in Atapuerca (Carbonell et al., 1999), Cova del Bo- lomor (Fernández Peris, 2007) and Galeria Pesada (Marks et al., 2012). Regarding the chronology, the rejection of dates used so far prevent the establishment of a precise chronological framework of the Cueva del Angel, but there is no doubt that the analysis cur- rently being done will age considerably the date of 120 ky years available so far. Boquete de Zafarraya cave: A Neanderthal site in southern Iberia Cecilio Barroso *, Miguel Caparrós **, Deborah Barsky ***, Anne Marie Moigne ****, Antonio Monclova * Introduction Boquete de Zafarraya cave (hereinafter C.B.Z.) is in the Alcaucín municipality, Málaga Province (southern Spain). It is 1020 m asl, fac- ing S-E at the foot of a cliff, with a steep slope below it. The coordinates are: 36º 56` 58``N – 4º 7`40`` W. This cave in Sierra de Alhama overlooks an extremely irregular landscape of limestone rang- es and very narrow valleys boxed in between them. Scarcely a few dozen metres away, howev- er, the landscape opens onto the mountain pass, Boquete de Zafarraya, which at 900 m asl con- nects the Mediterranean coast with inland Anda- lucia (Fig. 1). This landscape mosaic is completed by the 22 km² Zafarraya polje, formed from an intra-montane depression of karst and tectonic origin filled with basically Quaternary sediments, powerfully contrasting with its surroundings by its extensive subhorizontal landscape (Barroso, C. et al., 2006). The prehistoric Boquete de Zafarraya cave site was discovered by a member of this team (C.B.R.) in 1979. During the first stage of the archaeological excavations (1981-1983), led by C. Barroso and F. Medina Lara, we dis- covered levels containing Mousterian indus- try, a rich and varied quaternary wildlife and two quaternary Neanderthal fossils (Zaf. 1) and (Zaf. 2) (Barroso et al., 1983; Barroso et al., 1984.). The second archaeological stage at the site continued from 1990 to 1994. B.Z.C. is the last vestige of a cave which col- lapsed and whose morphology has been heav- ily affected by powerful slope erosion. At the mouth, a large arch-shaped porch rises 30 me- tres, measuring approx. 10 metres at the base. On the north wall there is a narrow 22 m long gallery, barely 2 m. in the widest sections, devel- oped from a fault plane. The cave is in stratified pisolitic and pseudo-oolitic limestone. This gal- lery is the source of the quaternary deposit. The infill was preserved by the carbonation processes inside which cemented much of it, preventing the intense erosion which took place through- out the area, heavily affected by the steep slope. Neanderthal fossils B.Z.C. is perhaps one of Iberia’s most impor- tant sites of Homo neanderthalensis fossils (Bar- * Fundación Instituto de Investigación de Prehistoria y Evolución Humana. Plaza del Coso 21, 14900 Lucena (Córdoba, Es- paña) email: barroso.cecilio@gmail.com ** Département de Préhistorie, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 75013 París, France *** Departement d’història i història de l’Art. Universitat Rovira i Virgili. **** Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. Centre Européen de Recherches Préhistoriques de Tautavel.