The occupational pattern of the Galería site (Atapuerca, Spain): A technological perspective Paula García-Medrano a, * , Isabel C  aceres b, a , Andreu Oll  e a, b , Eudald Carbonell b, a, c a Institut Catal a de Paleoecologia Humana i Evoluci o Social (IPHES), Zona educacional 4, Campus Sescelades URV (EdificiW3), 43007 Tarragona, Spain b  Area de Prehist oria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Avinguda de Catalunya 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain c IVPP, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of Beijing, China article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: Acheulean Galería Refits Occupational patterns abstract Galería is one of the main sites of the Trinchera del Ferrocarril (railway trench) in Atapuerca, together with Gran Dolina and Sima del Elefante. The Galería excavations took place mainly during the 1980s and 1990s and continued until 2010. Work has recently resumed in the upper levels of the sequence, which has prompted us to summarize the previously collected data and plan an entire new set of questions in order to be able to compare that earlier data with information yielded from the new interventions. Galería consists of a long sequence dating from around 500 ka to 250 ka, which has made it possible to conduct a diachronic study of the technology at the site. As a consequence of the sustainment of similar occupational patterns and a similar ‘toolkit’, the technology at Galería generally enjoyed a broad stability throughout the technology the Middle Pleistocene. Nevertheless, we have isolated technological char- acteristics which reflect technological changes through time. In this case, we present a synchronic analysis of the human occupation phases of each subunit, which finally led us to a diachronic view of the site. Most of the knapping sequences occurred outside of the cave, making the chaînes op eratoires very fragmented. This was the result of short and sporadic occu- pations for the basic purpose of obtaining the animals that had fallen into the cave through a natural trap created by the TN shaft, in successful competition with carnivores. Although lithic refits are very scarce, we used them in this study to characterize the spatial distribution not only of the activities performed, but also of the knapping sequences carried out inside the cave. The two knapping locations (outside and inside) reflect different knapping strategies. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction and context Refits are a crucial instrument in the framework of lithic tech- nological analyses. Spurrell (1980) was one of the first researchers to use this method, when he identified refits between Levallois flakes and cores at Crayford (UK). Around the same time, a refit of the shaping sequences used to make a handaxe was found in Caddington (UK) (Smith, 1984; Bradley and Sampson, 1986). The utility of refits has been related to three main spheres of knowledge (Ashton, 2004): firstly, to analyse horizontal and vertical displace- ments and time lapses; secondly, to find direct evidence of human behaviour through the knapping processes identified and the movements used by the knappers; and thirdly, to gain a deeper understanding of human activities through the analysis of artefacts and their movements as a reflection of spatial use by humans, including determining the refitted artefacts' lifespan. This study presents a diachronic analysis of the occupational pattern of the Galería site, combining previous studies on the main characteristics and spatial distribution of the faunal (C aceres, 2002; C aceres et al., 2010) and lithic remains (García-Medrano, 2011; García-Medrano et al., 2013, 2014, 2015; Oll e et al., 2013) with the current refit analysis; see Vallverdú et al. (1999) for a pre- liminary combined study. Few studies have focused on the spatial distribution and movement of pieces in Lower and Middle Pleis- tocene sites. Some exceptions are the site of Melka Kunture in Ethiopia (Galloti and Piperno, 2004); Lokalalei in Kenya (Roche et al., 1999); Boxgrove (Bergman et al., 1990; Roberts, 1999; Pope and Roberts, 2005), Barham (Ashton et al., 1998), and Eldeven in the UK (Ashton et al., 2005); Monte Poggiolo in Italy (Peretto et al., 1998); Maastrich-Belvedere in the Netherlands (Roebroeks, 1989); * Corresponding author. E-mail address: pgarciamedrano@gmail.com (P. García-Medrano). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.11.013 1040-6182/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e16 Please cite this article in press as: García-Medrano, P., et al., The occupational pattern of the Galería site (Atapuerca, Spain): A technological perspective, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.11.013