Small vertebrates from a Holocene gravelly deposit at El Salt (Alcoi, Alicante)

Abstract

The small-vertebrates’ assemblage recovered comes from Units I to IV from El Salt site (Alcoi, Spain). The sample is composed by nearly 310 remains, and includes one toad (Epidalea calamita), two lizards (Lacertidae indet. and Chalcides cf. bedriagai), two snakes (Coronella cf. girondica and cf. Coronella sp.), two insectivores (Crocidura sp. and Sorex sp.), one lagomorph (Oryctolagus cuniculus) and seven rodent taxa (Arvicola sapidus, Microtus sp., M. arvalis, M. cabrerae, M. duodecimcostatus, Apodemus sylvaticus, and Eliomys quercinus). All the species described in the present work are consistent with a Late Pleistocene-Holocene chronology. The presence of M. cabrerae (absent in the Middle Pleistocene) and M. duodecimcostatus (absent in the Mediterranean until the Late Pleistocene) seem to confirm this age. The presence of Neolithic pottery and M. arvalis in the same deposit is inconsistent from a biochronically point of view since this species was extirpated from this region at the end of the Late Pleistocene. Several taphonomic alterations related to transport within the small mammal remains have been identified. Further taphonomical and geoarchaeological work is needed to clarify the provenience of the studied faunal assemblages, which, given the high energy, erosional morphology and lithology of the sedimentary deposit, could have been reworked in a more recent time period.