Anejos a Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología

How stone tools bring us closer to economic activities: the Neolithic settlement of Los Cascajos (Los Arcos, Navarra)

Juan José Ibáñez — 2025-07-07

The Los Cascajos settlement is one of the most relevant Neolithic contexts in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula excavated in recent years. This paper focuses on the functional study carried out on a wide range flaked flint lithic tools documented in different structures belonging to two different occupation phases. This has not only allowed us to assess the significance of the activities carried out with these tools and to characterise them morphologically, but also to compare them from a diachronic perspective. This is highly relevant because very few functional studies have been carried out on Neolithic sites in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula, and even fewer with a broad chronological sequence

Salmedina 2' pits camp (Vallecas, Madrid). Use of territory from the Palaeolithic to Early Middle Ages

Juan Gómez Hernanz — 2025-07-07

The place named Salmedina has been associated since the 70s of the last century with the Bell-Beaker Culture. Various archaeological interventions have shed light on the Chalcolithic settlement of the area near the capture of the Manzanares by the Jarama River. In this work we present an overview of the latest interventions that have taken place at the Salmedina 2 site. The excavations have revealed the reuse during the Copper Age of Paleolithic materials from the surroundings as raw material for knapping, along with the use of space of this camp of pits in the Copper Age and the Early Middle Ages.

Technological and functional study of level f of the Cave Los Moros 1, Gabasa (Peralta de Calasanz, Huesca)

Cristina López-Tascón — 2025-07-07

We present a first technical and functional analysis of level f of the Moros 1 cave at Gabasa, a site located in the eastern part of the central Pre-Pyrenees, which presents several Mousterian occupations. Level f yielded two dental remains of the species Homo neanderthalensis, and like the rest of the cave strata, it includes an abundant sample of fauna, composed essentially of ibex, deers and horses, although only the last two species show cut marks produced with lithic tools. The lithic industry is typically Mousterian, with discoid and Levallois cores; a large part of the operational chain must have been carried out off-site, as indicated by the technological analysis, including finished tools knapped and retouched elsewhere. Functionally, the use-wear marks are neither numerous nor very developed and tell us about specific tasks of prey processing (butchery, skin treatment).

Genes and elites in the mid IIIrd millennium BC: the current interpretation of the Bell Beaker phenomenon at the crossroads

Rafael Garrido Pena — 2025-07-07

The study of the Bell Beaker question has a long history of research, mainly studies made from the most traditional approaches of historicism. However, from the 70’s new alternatives appeared dealing with its social context, as an elite phenomenon and, later, as part of complex commensality rituals. The abrupt irruption of the archaeogenetic studies has revolutionized the investigation of this problem too. The controversial aspects of this question are more linked to the interpretation of the incoming information than from the data itself, as a sort of revival of the most archaic historicist approaches, reviving concepts as the Beaker “folk” or “culture” in several recent accounts. It is possible, however, to deal with this new genomic data in a more careful and serene manner, not to mention the pending development of many other research lines that will contribute to a better and more complete understanding of this complex and controversial problem of the European prehistory.

The Chalcolithic occupation on Juan Ramón Jiménez street (Valencina de la Concepción, Seville). Archaeometallurgy and use-wear analysis

Pedro López Aldana — 2025-07-07

In 2019, an excavation was carried out on an urban plot in Juan Ramón Jiménez Street (Valencina de la Concepción), identifying various structures. A hut delimited by a perimeter ditch stood out and in particular a pit grave that presented two skulls of a young adult man and a young woman in secondary deposition, dated c. 2875-2625 BC. Among the archaeological materials, the copper metal productions stand out, a chisel, an awl and a preform, as well as a fragment of a decorated plate idol.

Activity spaces and domestic structures of the Middle Chalcolithic on Clara Campoamor Street-Andalusia Avenue (Valencina de la Concepción, Seville). A first approach

Mercedes Ortega Gordillo — 2025-07-07

In 2014, the excavation of an urban plot was carried out on Andalucía Avenue and Clara Campoamor Street, Valencina de la Concepcion, between the plots of the New Secondary Education Institute and the Matarrubilla Partial Plan, where a large metallurgical sector has been identified. In the western sector, three structures were excavated, identifying textile work, with about 60 clay crescents, copper metallurgy and ivory work. On the other hand, in the eastern sector, three possible housing structures were identified, two of them, UC 174 and UC 420, with a perimeter ditch and the third, UC 75-77 with an alignment of post marks. The entrances of the three possible huts seem to open towards a common space outside both.

La Villeta (Ciudad Real), an Early Bronze Age pit complex in La Mancha

Luis Benítez de Lugo Enrich — 2025-07-08

Currently, settlements with underground structures from the Early Bronze Age in the Iberian Southern Plateau are exceptional due to the difficulty of identifying them in surface surveys. La Villeta I and II were located in 2004 and 2008 during the construction of the Ciudad Real airport. Villeta I had 19 pits and Villeta II another 11, with a maximum depth of 1.13 m. Along with a repertoire of ceramics from the Bronze Age, the most significant find was a copper halberd, reused as a dagger, in pit 6 of Villeta I, perhaps result of a deliberate act of deposition, while a radiocarbon dating from the pit 3 of Villeta I indicates a chronology of c. 2275 (2140) 2035 BC which places in the Early Bronze Age, contemporary with phase I of the motilla del Azuer, 2200/2150-2000 BC

Of objects and science: Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola and the archaeological collections of the Altamira Cave

Carmen de las Heras Martín — 2025-07-07

In this article we present the history of the archaeological collections of the cave of Altamira that belonged to Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, its first excavator and the discoverer of its cave art. Sanz de Sautuola collected the first archaeological objects around 1875, but the bulk of his collection was formed between the autumn of 1878 and 1880. At that time, the Palaeolithic was a little-known period in Spain. Assuming the existence of a remote past for mankind was not easy, especially when cave art had just been discovered, also in Altamira. He saw in his archaeological findings proof of the antiquity of the paintings, which he considered to be contemporaneous with the deposit and therefore also belonging to the Palaeolithic period. He therefore decided to send some of the objects found inside the cave to the only institutions and people who could support this attribution at the time, such as the National Archaeological Museum, the prestigious palaeontologist and geologist Juan de Vilanova i Piera and Emile de Cartailhac, one of the leading French archaeologists of the time. Sanz de Sautuola's personal collection was passed on to new generations of his family until it became part of the permanent collections in various museum institutions in Cantabria, as described below.

The settlement of Valencina de la Concepción (Seville). Campaign 1975. The Bell Beaker Late Chalcolithic phase and the burials of grid A

Diego Ruiz Mata — 2025-07-07

In 1975, the first extensive systematic excavations were carried out in Valencina de la Concepción, in four sectors of La Perrera –doghouse-: A and B, current street Jacinto Benavente 17 and 19; C and D, on Guadalquivir street 18-23. In sector A, 3 grids were opened, A1-A2-A3, measuring 3.50 x 3.50 m, which allowed us to document a large ditch almost 13 m long and 4 m wide, where a maximum depth of -5.88 m was reached. In the layer V, 0.40 m deep, Late Chalcolithic, once the ditch was filled, a pebble pavement was built, where 2 bell beakers fragments were documented. Later, was dug an adult was buried covered by a stone mound

Elements for the interpretation of prehistoric projectiles: morphology, traceology, ethnography and function

Paula Jardón Giner — 2025-07-07

The study of prehistoric projectiles and weapons constitutes a very significant element, since it concentrates general trends of prehistoric societies, particular technologies adapted to different socioeconomic contexts and relationships with the environment and with other human groups. Functional analysis is a method that, based on experimentation and observation of manufacturing and use stigmas, has been providing valuable information in recent decades to understand the activities of the archaeological record. We present here a review of the lines of research, both regarding the method of analysis of traces of use and the experimentation and comparison with ethnographic cases and their impact on archaeological interpretations.

About a second Chalcolithic individual burial in a rock-shelter with schematic art: the Cave of Jaime el Barbudo (Abarán, Murcia, Spain)

Joaquín Lomba Maurandi — 2025-07-07

The Cueva de Jaime el Barbudo is a good example of a Chalcolithic burial in a cave with post-Palaeolithic rock art, dated to 2814-2679 Cal BC (4210 ± 30 BP). The site is studied based on the anthropological characterization of the few human remains from this second individual burial, and the technological and traceological study of the carved and polished stone industry. The analysis of that industry allows us to distinguish several groups, one perhaps directly associated with the buried, while the rest could be incorporations made later. The presence of rock art and the location of the cavity, at a high level with respect to a natural passageway, as well as the absence of known habitats in the vicinity, are common features to other nearby sites, and the archaeological record may respond to mobility patterns along that communication route

Enchinadas: prehistoric pottery with rock inlays

Aixa Vidal — 2025-07-07

We introduce a group of open flat pottery vessels found in archaeological sites to the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula which have as a peculiarity the presence of intentional quartz inlays in the inside. Their features as well as material parallels with other sites indicate their classification into two different chronological assemblages of Chalcolithic and Iron Age times. We inquiry into the technology and possible use and significance of these remarkable pieces scarcely mentioned in the bibliography.

huellas de vida

Ignacio Martin Lerma — 2025-07-07

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