This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The 2026 field season at Prado Vargas Cave, located in the village of Cornejo in the northern province of Burgos, Spain, within the Ojo Guareña karst complex, has expanded the excavation of Neanderthal sublevel 4D by 32 square meters (344 square feet), bringing the total excavated area to 140 square meters (1,507 square feet). More than 1,500 animal remains and stone tools were recovered, strengthening the interpretation of this roughly 46,000-year-old layer as a large Neanderthal camp.
The excavation is co-directed by Alfonso Benito of the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), Marta Navazo of the University of Burgos, and Rodrigo Alonso of the Museum of Human Evolution. Around 20 archaeologists and students took part, mainly from the University of Burgos, the University of Cantabria and Complutense University of Madrid, as well as the Austral University of Chile and the Natural History Museum in Chile. This summer's work focused on the entrance to the cave.
Excavation of sublevel 4D has increased the exposed area of this Neanderthal occupation to 140 square meters (1,507 square feet), making Prado Vargas one of the most extensively excavated Neanderthal cave sites in the world. The more than 1,500 archaeological and paleontological remains recovered this season provide further evidence that Neanderthal groups made intensive use of the cave, mainly from spring through late autumn. The faunal remains include teeth and bone fragments from wild boar (Sus scrofa), horse (Equus ferus), steppe bison (Bison priscus), aurochs (Bos primigenius), fallow deer (Dama dama) and red deer (Cervus elaphus).
Many of them bear cut marks and percussion traces, particularly on limb bones, providing evidence of butchery, including carcass processing and the breaking of long bones to extract marrow. Numerous stone tools were also recovered. Around 95% were made from flint, while the remaining 5% were produced from quartzite and quartz pebbles.
Unretouched sharp-edged flakes dominate the assemblage, followed by scrapers, notches and denticulates. Among the most notable finds this season are several bone retouchers that, together with those recovered in previous years, bring the total documented at the site to around 100. These are fragments of animal long bones that Neanderthals used to shape and maintain the edges of stone tools.
Their abundance makes Prado Vargas a particularly important site for investigating this technological practice. Taken together, the 2026 findings support the hypothesis that sublevel 4D served as a large camp where Neanderthal groups established prolonged occupations from spring to autumn over several generations, around 46,000 years ago. Alongside excavation of the Neanderthal layer, this summer's fieldwork completed the excavation of the younger 4A-AB sublevels, which date to the Upper Paleolithic.
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