About

Dan Cabanes is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, specializing in Microarchaeology, Site Formation Processes, Phytoliths, FTIR, Diagenesis, and the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. His research focuses on understanding how human activities have modified the microscopic sedimentary record, using minerals and micro-botanical remains preserved in archaeological sediments as proxies for biological, social, and economic changes. He has studied critical periods in human history, including the emergence of the genus Homo in Africa, the transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic in Europe, and the development of urban centers in the Levant. Cabanes holds a Ph.D. from Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain, earned in 2009, with a doctoral thesis on the formation processes of archaeological sediments and paleosoils through the analysis of phytoliths, minerals, and microremains. His academic background includes a history degree and a master's from the same university. He has held post-doctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Universitat de Barcelona, Weizmann Institute of Science, and Tel-Aviv University. His work integrates archaeobotany and geoarchaeology, and he has contributed to developing rapid methods for phytolith analysis. Cabanes has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, advancing understanding of site formation, human impact, and environmental reconstruction in archaeological contexts.

Research topics

• Archaeology
• Geology
• Geography
• Paleontology
• Biology
• Ecology
• Forestry

Selected publications

• Vial Excavation: Microstratigraphic Excavation in the Laboratory - A Methodology for High Resolution Sampling and Integration of Data from Multiple Analytical Methods

  Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology · 2026-04-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Over the last decades, archaeology has been undergoing a revolution of sorts driven by advances in the archaeological sciences and the ability to extract data from sediments. These new methods work at the micro- or even molecular scale and thus require extremely high levels of precision for the context of the samples. While there have been significant advances in proveniencing techniques, by and large, basic excavation methods have hardly changed in half a century or more. We document excavations better, we save more things more systematically, and we move slower, but excavations are still primarily focused on the recovery of objects. In our experience, sampling for the archaeological sciences is shoehorned into the existing methodology. Here we describe an excavation methodology - vial-based excavation - that is instead designed from the start for the archaeological sciences and, in particular, to systematically collect the invisible components of the archaeological record. To do this, we remove intact blocks of sediment to a laboratory, employ a vacuum system for complete recovery of sediments, collect sediments as a large number of very small samples in glass vials, use micromorphology extensively to track micro-contexts, and use digital systems to document contexts efficiently. We applied this methodology to the investigation of fire residues in Layer 8 of the Middle Paleolithic site of Pech de l’Azé IV, France. Our purpose here is to share this methodology as a potentially useful companion to more traditional excavation methodologies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Starch-rich plant foods 780,000 y ago: Evidence from Acheulian percussive stone tools

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-01-06 · 13 citations

  articleOpen access

  In contrast to animal foods, wild plants often require long, multistep processing techniques that involve significant cognitive skills and advanced toolkits to perform. These costs are thought to have hindered how hominins used these foods and delayed their adoption into our diets. Through the analysis of starch grains preserved on basalt anvils and percussors, we demonstrate that a wide variety of plants were processed by Middle Pleistocene hominins at the site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Israel, at least 780,000 y ago. These results further indicate the advanced cognitive abilities of our early ancestors, including their ability to collect plants from varying distances and from a wide range of habitats and to mechanically process them using percussive tools.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• MICROCHARCOAL QUANTIFICATION IN THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD: TAPHONOMIC BIASES AND NEW APPROACHES

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2023-01-01

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• Contributors

  Elsevier eBooks · 2022-01-01

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• The Fumier Sequences of El Mirador: An Approach to Fire as a Sociocultural Practice and Taphonomic Agent

  Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology/Interdisciplinary contributions to archaeology · 2022-01-01 · 4 citations

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• Fire among Neanderthals

  Elsevier eBooks · 2022-01-01 · 5 citations

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• Phytolith evidence for the pastoral origins of multi-cropping in Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq)

  Scientific Reports · 2022-01-10 · 15 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Multi-cropping was vital for provisioning large population centers across ancient Eurasia. In Southwest Asia, multi-cropping, in which grain, fodder, or forage could be reliably cultivated during dry summer months, only became possible with the translocation of summer grains, like millet, from Africa and East Asia. Despite some textual sources suggesting millet cultivation as early as the third millennium BCE, the absence of robust archaeobotanical evidence for millet in semi-arid Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) has led most archaeologists to conclude that millet was only grown in the region after the mid-first millennium BCE introduction of massive, state-sponsored irrigation systems. Here, we present the earliest micro-botanical evidence of the summer grain broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) in Mesopotamia, identified using phytoliths in dung-rich sediments from Khani Masi, a mid-second millennium BCE site located in northern Iraq. Taphonomic factors associated with the region's agro-pastoral systems have likely made millet challenging to recognize using conventional macrobotanical analyses, and millet may therefore have been more widespread and cultivated much earlier in Mesopotamia than is currently recognized. The evidence for pastoral-related multi-cropping in Bronze Age Mesopotamia provides an antecedent to first millennium BCE agricultural intensification and ties Mesopotamia into our rapidly evolving understanding of early Eurasian food globalization.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Recognizing Early Use of Fire in the Paleolithic of Europe

  The 86th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology · 2021-01-01

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• A new chronological framework and site formation history for Cova del Gegant (Barcelona): Implications for Neanderthal and Anatomically Modern Human occupation of NE Iberian Peninsula

  Quaternary Science Reviews · 2021-09-17 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access

  The chronological framework for Neanderthal occupation and demise across Europe continues to be debated. In particular, there is still uncertainty regarding the nature, timing and regional expressions of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition associated with the disappearance of Neanderthals and the broader expansion of modern human populations in Europe around 42–40 thousand years ago (ka). The geographical and chronological distribution of Neanderthal populations also remains difficult to evaluate owing to the practical challenges of directly dating human fossils at many sites, and the fact that a large proportion of Neanderthals sites lie close to, or well-beyond, the limits of radiocarbon dating. Cova del Gegant – one of the few sites in north-eastern Iberian Peninsula to yield Neanderthal fossil remains, associated Mousterian archaeological layers, and occupations related to the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic transition – is a key locality for informing these ongoing debates. Here we provide a comprehensive chronological framework for the Cova del Gegant site using multiple radiometric dating techniques (uranium-thorium (U–Th), radiocarbon and luminescence dating), sedimentological and micromorphological analyses, and Bayesian modelling. This integrated chronostratigraphic approach enables us to reliably reconstruct site formation processes and history, and undertake improved correlations with other sites regionally. The results allow us to sub-divide the Cova del Gegant sequence into three sections spanning ∼94 ka to ∼32 ka, namely: a Middle Palaeolithic sequence covering ∼94–59 ka, a Châtelperronian/Aurignacian section spanning ∼43–39 ka, and a Late Aurignacian/Gravettian section spanning ∼34–32 ka. The Neanderthal fossil remains accumulated in the cave between the end of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5/MIS 4 and the beginning of MIS 3, during two different events dated to ∼72–67 ka and ∼60–52 ka. The chronological framework for Cova del Gegant is in accordance with that reported for other Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites in north-eastern Iberian Peninsula, and reveals a record of successive human occupation coinciding with a period of progressive global cooling and lowering sea levels (end of MIS 5 through to MIS 2). Sedimentological evidence points to the emergence of a coastal platform in front of the cave and indicates that local palaeoenvironmental conditions likely benefited human displacements along the littoral margin, and favoured repeated occupation of the cave during the Late Pleistocene.

  PublisherDOI

• Reconstructing agro-pastoral practice in the Mesopotamian-Zagros borderlands: Insights from phytolith and FTIR analysis of a dung-rich deposit

  Journal of Archaeological Science Reports · 2021-07-08 · 9 citations

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Frequent coauthors

• Rosa M. Albert

  Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

  32 shared

• Ethel Allué

  Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social

  14 shared

• Elisabetta Boaretto

  Weizmann Institute of Science

  14 shared

• Ruth Shahack‐Gross

  14 shared

• Irene Esteban

  Nelson Mandela University

  11 shared

• Aren M. Maeir

  9 shared

• Francesc Burjachs

  Universidad Rovira i Virgili

  9 shared

• Isabel Expósito

  Universidad Rovira i Virgili

  8 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Universitat Rovira i Virgili

  2009

Awards & honors

• Atapuerca Fundation pre-doctoral fellowship (2006–2009)
• Pre-doctoral fellowship Ministry of Science and Education (S…
• Juan de la Cierva Post-doctoral contract (Ministry of Econom…
• Beatriu de Pinós Post-doctoral fellowship (Agaur, Catalonian…
• Post-doctoral fellowship FP-7 CORDIS European Research Counc…