The Magdalenian human remains from El Mir  on Cave, Cantabria (Spain) Jos  e Miguel Carretero a, b, * , Rolf M. Quam b, c, d , Asier G  omez-Olivencia e, f, g, b , María Castilla a , Laura Rodríguez a , Rebeca García-Gonz  alez a a Laboratorio de Evoluci on Humana, Departamento de CC. Hist oricas y Geografía, Facultad de Humanidades y Educaci on, Universidad de Burgos, Plaza Misael Ba~ nuelos s/n, 09001 Burgos, Spain b Centro UCM-ISCIII de Investigaci on sobre Evoluci on y Comportamiento Humanos, Avda. Monforte de Lemos, 5, Pab. 14, 28029 Madrid, Spain c Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University (SUNY), Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA d Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West @ 79th St., New York, NY 10024-5192, USA e Dept. Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología, Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, UPV-EHU. Apdo. 644, 48080 Bilbao, Spain f IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, Spain g UMR 7194, CNRS, D ept. Pr ehistoire, Mus eum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Mus ee de l'Homme, 17, Place du Trocad ero, 75016 Paris, France article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: Upper Paleolithic Ritual human burial Cantabrian Spain Paleoanthropology Skeletal morphology abstract In 2001 and between 2010 and 2013 El Mir on cave in northern Spain yielded a partial human skeleton in a Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian deposit. The skeleton has been directly radiocarbon dated to 15,460 ± 40 BP. The archaeological context suggests that the human remains were deposited at the site as a result of a deliberate burial. Here we present a complete inventory and anthropological study of this individual. The remains belong to a single, middle-aged, robust female individual of ca. 160 cm in height and weighing ca. 60 kg, with good health status. The individual is represented by the mandible, numerous teeth and many postcranial bones, including significant portions of the vertebral column, costal skeleton, hands and feet. The Magdalenian context of El Mir on cave provides additional data on the otherwise poorly known Upper Paleolithic populations of Southwestern Europe. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The Iberian Peninsula of Southwest (SW) Europe is an important region for the study of the Upper Paleolithic due to the abundance of sites with long and well-dated sequences (Straus, 1995). Despite the abundant archaeological record comprised mainly of cave sites, with many expressions of cave-art, human remains for this cultural period are far rarer (Arsuaga et al., 2001; Straus et al., 2011; Trinkaus et al., 2001, 2011; Zilh~ ao and Trinkaus, 2002) especially when compared to the relative plethora of Upper Paleolithic skel- etons found in France, Italy and Central Europe (Holt and Formicola, 2008; Trinkaus and Svoboda, 2006; Trinkaus et al., 2014). El Mir on cave has revealed a long sequence of Magdalenian plus Azilian (Epimagdalenian) levels that, with its 54 radiocarbon dates, is one of the most complete and thoroughly dated in Iberia (Gonz alez-Morales and Straus, 2005; Straus and Gonz alez-Morales, 2012). In the 2001, 2010, 2011 and 2013 excavation seasons, a partial human skeleton was recovered in a highly ritualized context at the southeastern corner of the cave vestibule. The burial was placed in a narrow space between the engraved cave wall and a large block that had fallen from the ceiling soon before the burial and that was subsequently also engraved and stained with red ochre (Straus et al., 2011). A direct radiocarbon assay of the human fibula yielded a date of 15,460 ± 40 BP, placing the interment of this individual in the Lower Cantabrian Magdalenian. The archaeolog- ical and zooarchaeological details of this burial are explained at length in Fontes et al. (in this issue), Geiling and Marín-Arroyo (2015), Marin-Arroyo and Geiling (in this issue), Gonz alez-Mo- rales and Straus (2015) and Straus et al. (2015). The skeleton from El Mir on Cave has been labeled “El Miron 1”, there being several unrelated isolated human teeth from other levels e especially Magdalenian ones e in the cave- It takes on * Corresponding author. Laboratorio de Evoluci on Humana, Universidad de Burgos, Edificio IþDþi, Plaza Misael de Ba~ nuelos s/n, 09001 Burgos, Spain. Tel.: þ34 947 25 93 24. E-mail addresses: jmcarre@ubu.es (J.M. Carretero), rquam@binghamton.edu (R.M. Quam), asiergo@gmail.com, asier.gomezo@ehu.eus (A. G omez-Olivencia), mcastilla@universidaddeburgos.es (M. Castilla), lrgarcia@ubu.es (L. Rodríguez), mrgarcia@ubu.es (R. García-Gonz alez). 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.2015.03.026 0305-4403/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Archaeological Science xxx (2015) 1e18 Please cite this article in press as: Carretero, J.M., et al., The Magdalenian human remains from El Mir on Cave, Cantabria (Spain), Journal of Archaeological Science (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2015.03.026