Neanderthals at a Spanish rock shelter relied on wood as much as stone, 20,000-year study finds

Archaeologists working at a rock shelter in northeastern Spain have assembled the most detailed record yet of Neanderthal woodworking, identifying 597 wooden remains and imprints spanning roughly 20,000 years of occupation. The analysis, published in the journal Science Advances on October 7, shows that wood was not merely fuel for Neanderthal groups at the site but a raw material shaped into weapons, containers and shelter in ways that rival stone tool technology in sophistication.

The site, Abric Romaní, is a cliffside rock shelter near the town of Capellades, about 50 kilometers inland from Barcelona. It has been excavated for roughly four decades by researchers from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, known by its Catalan acronym IPHES-CERCA. The institute, affiliated with the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in nearby Tarragona, has made Abric Romaní one of its flagship long-term excavations. The new study, led by archaeologist Palmira Saladié, drew on material recovered from 16 distinct archaeological levels, dated to between about 62,000 and 40,000 years ago.

Spears, trays and a mysterious club

Among the wooden pieces researchers were able to classify, 13 stood out as clearly shaped tools or structural elements. They include two spears — one a 2.45-meter thrusting weapon, the other just under two meters long and found in association with deer remains, suggesting it was used in hunting. Several shorter, pointed sticks may have served as digging tools for unearthing tubers and other underground food. Four pieces of charred, flattened bark are interpreted as trays; Saladié said they likely "served to isolate food from the dirt on the ground," according to an account of the findings published by the Catalan outlet Ara. A single rectilinear pole, more than five meters long and stripped of branches, appears to have supported a tripod-like windbreak structure near a cluster of small hearths that researchers believe marked an individual's sleeping area.

The most unusual find is a club-like object with no clear parallel in the Paleolithic record. Roughly 30 centimeters long, it has a flared handle at one end and a slightly curved, angled working end at the other, with scraping marks that show it was deliberately shaped rather than simply broken from a branch. Saladié called it "an extraordinary piece." Researchers are not certain what it was used for — ethnographic parallels among more recent hunter-gatherer groups show similar clubs used for hunting, fishing or striking, but the team could not determine which, if any, of those uses applies here.

Why wood this old almost never survives

Organic material is the weak point of Paleolithic archaeology: wood, unlike stone or bone, normally rots away within decades, leaving stone tools to dominate what scientists can study. Abric Romaní is unusual because water saturated with calcium carbonate dripped steadily through the rock shelter. As wooden objects were abandoned and began to decompose, the mineral formed a mold — a travertine cast — around them, sometimes preserving detail down to the level of individual plant cells even after the wood itself had rotted away. The same process previously yielded a wooden tool with a handle, dated to around 56,000 years old, that IPHES researchers described at the site following a 2019 excavation season; the new study folds that kind of isolated discovery into a far larger, systematic catalog built from material collected across the full four decades of digging.

The wood itself came from more than one species selected for different purposes, according to the research team: Scots pine for hearths and more resistant tools, and juniper bark for containers. That selectivity, researchers argue, points to planning and accumulated technical knowledge passed between generations, rather than opportunistic use of whatever branch was nearby.

What it means for how Neanderthals are understood

The study's authors frame the find as evidence that woodworking was a routine, integrated part of Neanderthal technology — not a marginal or occasional activity that happened to leave behind an unusual object or two. Co-author Gema Chacón told reporters, in comments carried by Gizmodo, that the pattern "suggests that woodworking was not occasional or exceptional. It was simply part of their technology."

"Wood was probably a much more important part of Neanderthal life than we normally see in the archaeological record. Stone survives extremely well, so naturally stone tools dominate the archaeological record," said Josep Vallverdú, an IPHES-CERCA archaeologist and co-author of the study.

Saladié described the broader picture the site now offers: the hearths, the stone tools, the processed animal bones and the wood together let researchers reconstruct how a Neanderthal group organized its living space and managed fire over a span of roughly 20,000 years at the same shelter. She also cautioned that the material, while unusually well preserved for wood of this age, remains difficult to study, since the objects survive only as mineral casts and impressions rather than as the original organic matter, which limits what methods can be applied to individual pieces.

What happens next

The Abric Romaní excavation is ongoing, and researchers say further seasons are likely to add to the wood catalog, particularly from deeper, older layers that have not yet been fully excavated. The team's findings add to a small but growing body of evidence suggesting that Neanderthal groups across Europe used fire-assisted woodworking techniques well before the arrival of anatomically modern humans in the region. Vallverdú summarized the broader implication succinctly, telling reporters that "perhaps the simplest message is that the Palaeolithic was not a world made only of stone."