Research paper Archeozoological study of the macromammal remains stratigraphically associated with the Magdalenian human burial in El Mir  on Cave (Cantabria, Spain) Ana B. Marín-Arroyo * , Jeanne Marie Geiling Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehist oricas de Cantabria, Universidad de Cantabria, Avda. de los Castros, s/n, 39005 Santander, Spain article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: El Mir on Cave Cantabrian Spain Lower Magdalenian Paleoeconomy Archeozoology Human burial abstract The presence of abundant macromammal remains in the level in which the first Magdalenian human burial ever found in the Iberian Peninsula affords an outstanding opportunity to reconstruct aspects of the subsistence strategy of the hunteregatherer group to which the deceased woman may have belonged. The analyses reported here, in addition to rejecting the hypothesis of deliberate faunal grave goods or funerary offerings, give us a better understanding of how Lower Magdalenian societies exploited available food resources, providing a first glimpse of how the El Mir on site fitted within the overall paleoeconomic framework of the Oldest Dryas phase of the Late Glacial in Cantabrian Spain. Furthermore, the particular location of the site at the ecotone between the Cantabrian Mountains and the valley of the As on River, not far from the coastal lowlands, provides evidence of a highly efficient, productive system for exploiting the available ungulate game of the region. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Coming after the Last Glacial Maximum, the Magdalenian period in the Franco-Cantabrian region was one of the periods of maximum cultural elaboration within the European Upper Paleo- lithic. Its rich archeological record provides detailed evidence about the lifeways of hunteregatherer groups in terms of technology, subsistence, territorial organization, and artistic activity (Straus and Gonz alez Morales, 2012). In contrast, our knowledge of treatment of the dead during this period is relatively limited, since discoveries of human burials are few (and, until recently, essentially non- existent in Iberia). At this time, only 26 single and double pri- mary burials (representing 31 individuals) have been uncovered in all of the Late Upper Paleolithic of Europe and the Near East. Most of the specifically Magdalenian burials are from France (Orschiedt, 2013; Pettitt, 2011; Riel-Salvatore and Gravel-Miguel, 2013). Grave goods clearly associated with primary Upper Paleolithic burials are not the norm, although such offerings have been clearly identified by archeologists in some cases. The objects generally found together with human remains are lithic and osseous artifacts, faunal remains and ochre (see Riel-Salvatore and Gravel Miguel, 2013 for a recent synthesis). Non-weapon artifacts have been found with 22% of Late Upper Paleolithic (LUP) burials, weapons with 32% and ochre with 50%. It is often difficult to tell if the bones of large mammalsdpresent in 34% of the LUP burialsdhad been placed there deliberately or were simply the remains of animals that had been eaten and were discarded, becoming part of the garbage mixed with sediments in which the human consumers of the animals had later dug the graves within habitation sites. The scarcity of taphonomic studies of animal bones physically related with human remains makes any conclusions on this question highly problematic (Henry-Gambier et al., 2013; Henry-Gambier and Faucheux, 2012; Orschiedt, 1999, 2002). Many LUP burials also contain mollusk shells (sometimes perforated). The macro- mammal remains can include either selected skeletal elements from animals present in the normal diet of the Upper Paleolithic people, such as atrophied red deer canines, or items from animals with highly symbolic (but not dietary) importance including such carnivores as foxes or Paleolithic dogs (Ma ska, 2008: 185; Davis and Valla, 1978; Maher et al., 2011) or in still other cases, simply remains of animals that had been consumed in the same sites which served both as habitation places and burial grounds for deceased group members. In this context, the discovery of the Lower Magdalenian burial in El Mir on Cave is quite unique. In a relatively interior part of the cave * Corresponding author. E-mail address: marinab@unican.es (A.B. Marín-Arroyo). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2015.03.009 0305-4403/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Archaeological Science xxx (2015) 1e9 Please cite this article in press as: Marín-Arroyo, A.B., Geiling, J.M., Archeozoological study of the macromammal remains stratigraphically associated with the Magdalenian human burial in El Mir on Cave (Cantabria, Spain), Journal of Archaeological Science (2015), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2015.03.009