Cocina cave revisited: Bayesian radiocarbon chronology for the last hunter-gatherers and first farmers in Eastern Iberia

Recent excavations and radiocarbon work conducted at Cocina Cave (Valencia region, Eastern Iberia) provide new insights into the transition from foraging to farming in the eastern Iberian Peninsula between 8000 and 7300 cal yrs. BP. Cocina cave was discovered in 1940 and excavated by L. Pericot from 1941 to 1945. J. Fortea continued excavations in the 70s. Despite early international recognition and great promise of significance, the materials recovered from these excavations have only been partially analyzed and published. A new project started in 2012 is focused on these cave deposits with the main goal of understanding the occupation sequence during the neolithization process in the Western Mediterranean. The project includes a complete analysis of cultural material and biological remains of the previous excavations and integrates a 3D reconstruction of the stratigraphy and spatial analysis of the recorded artifact distributions. The results presented in this paper highlight the chronological position of materials deposited by the last hunter-gatherers and first farmers in Cocina cave based on data from the 1941 and 1945 trenches.