New excavation campaign at the Molí del Salt archaeological site (Vimbodí i Poblet, Tarragona)

A team led by Susana Alonso and Manuel Vaquero, researchers from IPHES-CERCA, plans to carry out a new excavation campaign at the Molí del Salt Paleolithic site, in the municipality of Vimbodí i Poblet, between May 11 and June 5. This year's campaign will be the twenty-seventh conducted at Molí del Salt since work began in 1999. 

The main objective of this new campaign is to continue the large-scale excavation of level B2, the oldest in the stratigraphic sequence. This level, dated to approximately 15,000 years ago, began to be excavated in 2019 and is providing a large number of archaeological remains, including thousands of animal bones and stone artifacts, human remains belonging to a child approximately 4 or 5 years old, and stone plaques with engravings. Furthermore, level B2 presents great spatial complexity, as numerous units of anthropic origin have been identified, such as block associations, pebble accumulations, combustion structures, and ash deposits. During the 2026 campaign, the team expects to reach the base of this level in some sectors of the site.

The Molí del Salt site is located on the left bank of the Milans River, one of the main watercourses forming the headwaters of the Francolí River, in the municipality of Vimbodí i Poblet (Conca de Barberà). Archaeological excavations carried out since 1999 have uncovered a stratigraphic sequence approximately 2.5 meters thick, featuring a significant series of human occupations corresponding to the Mesolithic and Upper Paleolithic, dated between 9,000 and 15,000 years before present. However, the main part of the sequence corresponds to the period between 13,000 and 15,000 years before present, when late Upper Paleolithic occupations occurred.

This year's excavation work will involve 23 archaeologists, mostly students from the Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree in Quaternary Archaeology and Human Evolution at the Rovira i Virgili University, as well as students from the University of Valencia, the University of La Laguna, and UNED.

Funding

The first excavation campaign at Molí del Salt took place in 1999, and research work has continued annually without interruption until today. They are funded by the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya, through the four-year research project "Paleoenvironmental evolution and prehistoric settlement in the basins of the Francolí, Gaià, Siurana rivers and the streams of the Camp de Tarragona," the Conca de Barberà County Council, and the Vimbodí i Poblet City Council.