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# Neanderthal wooden spears and a club found at Abric Romaní near Barcelona
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/issledovateli-katalonskogo-instituta-paleoekologii-cheloveka-i-sotsialnoi-evoliutsii-opublikovali-pervyi-polnyi-analiz-dereviannykh-nakhodok-so-stoianki-neandertaltsev-abrik-romani/
- Published: 2026-10-13T07:33:50.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-13T07:50:13.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Archaeology, Science

Researchers of the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution have published the first full analysis of the wooden finds from the Neanderthal site of Abric Romaní. The site lies beneath a rock shelter in the town of Capellades, not far from Barcelona. Neanderthals lived here from roughly 62,000 to 42,000 years ago, and archaeologists have been studying the site for some 40 years. The archaeologist Palmira Saladié led the work, in the course of which the scholars analysed 597 wooden remains and impressions from 16 layers.

Wood does not usually survive, but at Abric Romaní water with a high content of calcium carbonate dripped from the roof of the shelter. It quickly coated trunks and objects in a calcareous crust. When the wood rotted away, exact casts of it remained in the travertine, that is, in calcareous tufa. The researchers took three-dimensional scans of these casts and reconstructed the shape of the objects.

Among the finds are two spears, 2.45 and 1.99 metres long. The second spear lay beside deer bones, stone tools and hearths, that is, at a place where the Neanderthals butchered carcasses. The scholars also found a club made from a single piece of wood, with a handle about 16 centimetres long and an asymmetrical, crescent-shaped head. The researchers believe that the Neanderthals may have used it to finish off their prey, as a hammer, or to endow it with a symbolic meaning. The layers of the site have also yielded a trunk stripped of its branches, 5.1 metres long, which probably served as a support for a shelter, pieces of bark beside the hearths that may have served as trays, wooden awls, and interwoven sticks above a hearth for roasting or drying meat. The Neanderthals took the wood of the Scots pine for fires and durable tools, and used the pliant bark of juniper for vessels. At the well-known German sites of Schöningen and Lehringen spears and digging sticks predominate, whereas at Abric Romaní a far greater variety of wooden objects has been found.