The 2026 field season at Prado Vargas Cave, located in the village of Cornejo, in Merindad de Sotoscueva, northern Burgos province (Spain), within the Ojo Guareña karst complex, has extended excavation of Neanderthal sublevel 4D by a further 32 square metres, bringing the total excavated area to 140 square metres. 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 universities of Burgos, 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 metres, making Prado Vargas one of the most extensively excavated Neanderthal cave sites in the world.
The more than 1,500 archaeological and palaeontological remains recovered this season provide further evidence that Neanderthal groups made intensive use of the cave, mainly from spring until 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 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 which, together with those recovered in previous years, bring the total documented at the site to around one hundred. 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.
The first Homo sapiens at Ojo Guareña
Alongside excavation of the Neanderthal layer, this summer’s fieldwork completed the excavation of the younger 4A-AB sublevels, which date to the Upper Palaeolithic. A hearth associated with some of the earliest Homo sapiens groups to occupy this part of the Iberian interior was discovered in this area during the 2025 field season.
With a preliminary date of around 35,000 years ago, the study of the recovered material will help researchers understand how these early members of our species occupied the Ojo Guareña karst and used the landscape around the Trema River. The finds also confirm that this cave was occupied not only by Neanderthals but later by Homo sapiens, during the expansion of our species across western Eurasia.
Archaeology and outreach in Las Merindades
The excavation season also coincided with a new edition of a volunteer programme devoted to washing archaeological sediments from the site. The activity took place from August 10 to 14 on the Trema River as it passes through Cornejo, in collaboration with the local company Ráspano Ecoturismo and the visitor centre of the Ojo Guareña Natural Monument.
Around 50 children, young people and adults took part in washing, sieving and sorting approximately half a tonne of sediment from level 4. The work yielded small-mammal remains, including voles of the genus Microtus and rodents such as Pliomys coronensis and Apodemus sylvaticus. Studying these remains will help researchers reconstruct the climate and environmental conditions at Ojo Guareña during the Late Pleistocene.
An open day was also held on August 22 to present the latest progress from the excavation. Seventy-two people took part, including local residents and visitors spending the summer in the Las Merindades region.
The excavation co-directors Alfonso Benito, marta Navazo and Alfonso Rodrigo, also took part in the 36th Prehistory Lecture Series, organised by the Friends of El Castillo Cave Society, the Alberto I de Mónaco Rock Art Centre of Cantabria and Puente Viesgo Town Council. The latest discoveries from Prado Vargas were presented during a lecture held on August 11.
Since excavations began at Prado Vargas Cave, the project has received financial and logistical support from Burgos Provincial Council, Merindad de Sotoscueva Town Council, the Regional Government of Castile and León’s Department of Culture, Tourism and Sport, the Palarq Foundation, the villages of Cornejo and Quisicedo, the visitor centre of the Ojo Guareña Natural Monument, the local associations La Escuela de Cornejo and Naboqui de Quisicedo, and local residents, who have shown a strong commitment to preserving, understanding and sharing the archaeological heritage of their region.