Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Schuhmacher, T. X. (ed.) (2024): Fuente Álamo. Arqueozoología, arqueobotánica y artefactos macrolíticos

Alfredo Mederos Martín — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

reseña

Ling. J.; Díaz Guardamino, M.; Koch, J.; Horn, C.; Stos-Gale, Z. y Grahn, H. (2024): Bronze Age Rock Art in Iberia and Scandinavia. Words, Warriors, and Long-distance Metal Trade

Alfredo Mederos Martín — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

reseña

Vinander Antón, I. (2024): La cerámica a mano de Peña Negra y La Fonteta. Tradición y continuidad entre el Bronce Final y el Hierro Antiguo en el Sureste de la península ibérica

Alfredo Mederos Martín — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

reseña

Moreno Padilla, M. I. (2023): La Cerámica ibérica con Decoración Geométrica del Alto Guadalquivir: Territorios, Estilos e Identidades Iconográficas (ss. VI A.N.E. – I D.N.E.)

Pablo Harding Vera — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

reseña

Moratalla Jávega, J.; Chapa Brunet, T.; García Cardiel, J. y Segura Herrero, G. (2024): Esculturas ibéricas del área sacra de Las Agualejas (Monforte del Cid, Alicante)

Jesús Robles Moreno — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

reseña

Stewart, I. (2025): The Celts: A Modern History

Pablo Sánchez de Oro — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

reseña

Sanz Mínguez, C. y Pinto Sanz, J. (eds.) (2024): Pintia. Joyas de vidrio para la eternidad

Alfredo Mederos Martín — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

reseña

Caves in context. Contributions to the research history of Neolithic and Chalcolithic cave burials in the Portuguese Estremadura

Daniel van Calker — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This article aims to provide a wide-ranging overview of the research dynamics in the cave-necropolis of the Portuguese Estremadura. With nearly 160 years of active research, these Neolithic and Chalcolithic burials constitute a case study of particular interest to the History of Archaeology in Portugal. Indicators from this site typology have accumulated in recent years and are now among the most relevant for the Late Prehistory of the Central and Southern regions of the current Portuguese territory. It’s important to understand the nature of the research, focusing on the objectives and methods that make up the current legacy and form the basis for some of the ongoing projects.

The analysis of over a hundred cave burials has revealed an interesting distribution, alternating periods of high activity with others of a decline in that same activity. The number of old interventions is still higher than the most recent ones, drawing attention to their integration into contemporary archaeological discourse

Cortijo Lobato: a fortified ditch enclosure from the Copper Age in the Harnina plain, middle Guadiana basin (Extremadura, Spain). Preliminary results of the ongoing archaeological excavation

Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This article presents the first results of the excavations being carried out at the Cortijo Lobato site (Almendralejo, Badajoz), a fortified ditch enclosure from the Copper Age discovered in 2021 during archaeological surveys prior to the construction of a photovoltaic solar plant by the company ACCIONA ENERGÍA. The site covers an area of ??1.3 hectares, is 150 m in diameter, and is fortified by a complex defensive system consisting of three walls and four concentric ditches. Inside the fortification, several circular huts, a water storage pond, and other structures have been found. Ongoing research is allowing a chronological and cultural characterization of the settlement and understanding of the organization of this complex fortification, which was occupied during the first half of the third millennium BC.

New data on the El Peñón de Peñarroya- Pueblonuevo site (Alto Guadiato Valley, Córdoba). Contribution to the study of late prehistory in Córdoba

Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This paper presents the results of the archaeological survey carried out at Peñón de Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo (Córdoba, Spain). The objective of this intervention was to assess the archaeological record of the site and document the existence of material culture indicating the presence of a metallurgical production area. The work carried out has confirmed that metallurgical activity took place within the settlement and, furthermore, identified the presence of Neolithic archaeological remains that shed further light on the beginning of Late Prehistory in the north of the province of Córdoba. The collected materials have allowed us to propose the presence of a Neolithic settlement on the shady side of the hill, and on the sunny side, a fortified Chalcolithic population center that lasted until the Bronze Age.

Northern Birecik (Southeastern Turkey) during the Middle Bronze Age. The Kingdoms of Uršu and Mamma in the Old Assyrian route during Kultepe Ib

Jesús Gil Fuensanta, Alfredo Mederos Martín, Otabek Uktamovich Muminov — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The Uršu kingdom is one of the outstanding archaeological questions in the Middle Bronze Age I-II of the Middle-Upper Euphrates region, which connects with the Abarsal problem, more typical of the EB III/IV period in the same area.

The Uršu (Ur-šu) kingdom, cited in Ur III texts as an important kingdom, is located in Samsat Höyük, Kazane Höyük, and traditionally in the Gaziantep area, on the right bank of the river. That is, it is located within a 40-50 km stretch around the middle Euphrates, from Carchemish to further north. Right in the middle lies the pass between Tilbes and Zeugma, where theories suggest there were two cities along the Anatolian route on either bank: Abrum on the left bank and Zaqaria (Zuqarru).

The point about Kazane Höyük is that this site is associated with both Uršu and Abarsal, as well as the Amorite leader Shamshi-Adad (c. 1808-1776 BC), who is thought to have conquered the area sometime during the Middle Bronze Age (MB).

Materials from MB I and MB II north of Birecik modern town (in special two cylinder seals found at Tilbes Höyük) do provide evidence of a link with the caravan route and its possible connection with the kingdom of Uršu and specially the kingdom of Mamma, and suggest the hypothesis that Tilbes Höyük was a wabartum during Kultepe Ib. The occupation of Tilbes Hoyuk during the Middle Bronze Age appears to be long-lasting, but it is interrupted before the Late Bronze Age, with no occupation until an early period of the Achaemenid presence in the region, during the Late Iron Age.

One of the seals from Tilbes Höyük is anepigraphic and could well date between 19th and early 17th centuries BC, connected to the karum of Kultepe, due to its style, and therefore prior to the time of Shamshi-Adad I. The other seal bears an inscription with Middle Babylonian ductus, characteristic of a period after the disappearance of Shamshi-Adad, that is, between the mid-18th and 17th centuries BC, and characteristic of a Middle Bronze II context

Woman buried in prone position - First Intermediate Period burial from Thutmose III mortuary temple site in west-Luxor

Myriam Seco Álvarez, Javier Martínez Babón, Victoria Peña Romo — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

To the north of the perimeter wall of the mortuary temple of Thutmose III in Luxor, a rocky promontory was excavated that preserves small tombs from the First Intermediate Period and early Middle Kingdom. In 2018, at the base of this promontory, the partially mummified corpse, probably by natural processes, of a woman was found. She had been placed in a prone position, with stones on top of the wooden coffin and with a small mound of stones on top of the burial. Tombs with these characteristics are atypical in the funerary world of Pharaonic Egypt and, according to ancient beliefs, may represent fear of certain deceased people

The Late Bronze Age settlement of the South-East of the "Ciudad Deportiva" (Granada): urban planning and artefactual assemblages

Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The aim of this paper is to present the results of the study carried out on the artefactual and architectural assemblages found during the archaeological intervention carried out in 2017 and 2019 at “Ciudad Deportiva del Granada CF”. During the course of the activity, ceramic, faunal and metallic artefacts and structures associated with this settlement can be dated to the late Late Bronze Age of the Southeast were documented. Given its size, this is one of the largest settlements excavated in this area, which has led to the presence of large ceramic assemblages, amounting to a total of 1746 fragments. The data obtained are brought into line with the rest of the materials and structures (huts and pyro-structures, fundamentally), in order to provide us the particular case of the settlement and, in general, on the ex novo foundations of settlements during the Late Bronze Age (1100 - 900/850 BC). For all these reasons, this work provides new data that allow us to propose new questions and hypotheses about the settlement of the Vega de Granada during the Full Final Bronze Age and the Mediterranean influences from the Recent Final Bronze Age onwards that ended up altering the social structures of the indigenous populations

The first Phoenician funerary manifestations on the banks of the Guadalhorce: the necropolis of Cortijo de San Isidro

Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

During the archaeological intervention carried out ahead of construction works for the Málaga Airport expansion, the early Phoenician cremation necropolis of Cortijo de San Isidro was located on the right bank of the current bed of the Guadalhorce River, directly related to the Phoenician cult complex of La Rebanadilla (9th–8th centuries BC). The archaeological intervention consisted of evaluation trenching to establish the characteristics of the cemetery and its physical boundaries. This article presents the results from that work

Rediscovering Zoomorphic Sculptures, the case of the “lioness” of San Miguel de Serrezuela (Ávila)

Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

In the mid-20th century, three zoomorphic sculptures were found in the municipal term of San Miguel de Serrezuela (Ávila). Two of these sculptures are ‘verracos’. The other sculpture —the ‘lioness of San Miguel de Serrezuela’— is barely published following its difficult adscription to the typology of the ‘verracos’. This article presents a formal study of the later. Its characterisation starts with an historiographic analyse of the sculpture, being completed by morphometrical and photogrammetric data. From this point, a wide chrono-typological comparative is formulated with pieces dating from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages. All these analyses let conclude that the ‘lioness’ may be attributed to a chronology of the Second Iron Age, presenting Iberian influences.

The lion, the goddess and the pomegranate. Chronicles of the iconographic programme of burial site 463 at Cabecico del Tesoro (Verdolay, Murcia)

José Fenoll Cascales — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

An in-depth study of the set of plastic vessels deposited in grave 463 of the Iberian necropolis of Cabecico del Tesoro allows us to read an iconographic programme that has not been seen until now. In this sense, the visual interpretation is composed of five vessels that take the form of images and the premeditated placement of these in the burial pit. Thus, the deceased is incarnated by a foot-shaped piece surrounded by elements alluding to a chthonic female divinity: the pomegranate, the cock, the lion and the face of the divinity itself, which stand as apotropaic talismans and psychopomps responsible for guarding and protecting the change of state of the deceased, i.e. their passage to the beyond. With a chronology of the 3rd century BC, this burial site and the imported vessels deposited in it are evidence of the pan-Mediterranean and Hellenistic influence that swept through the Mare Nostrum during the aforementioned century, when all cultures and civilisations were in full contact and with a constant movement of people, images and beliefs that made the existence of the burial site studied here possible.

A Late Republican Simpulum from the Underwater Archaeological Site of Galúa, La Manga del Mar Menor (Cartagena)

Marina Castoldi, Carlos Espí Forcén, Raimon Graells i Fabregat — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This paper presents an exceptional bronze horizontal?handled simpulum, recovered from the waters of the
Mediterranean in La Manga (Cartagena) and donated to the Archaeological Museum of Murcia. The object’s
exceptional dimensions and state of preservation prompt a series of general reflections on this category of objects,
as well as a historical?archaeological contextualisation to explain its coherence in the southeast of the
Iberian Peninsula.

Never a finer army». Archaeology and history of Vitoria battle, 1813

Gorka Martín Etxebarria, Pablo Carrasco Gómez, Jonathan Jacobo Bar Shuali — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

In the context of the Peninsular War (1808-1814), the Battle of Vitoria took place on June 21, 1813. On the outskirts of this city in northern Spain, the allied army faced three French armies that were retreating towards their country. The Napoleonic defeat was a turning point. One of the crucial episodes in this clash was the fighting developed on the southern flank, in the Mountains of Vitoria. This article presents the results of an in-depth historical analysis together with the data obtained from the first archaeological intervention campaign. After a brief introduction, we describe the ways of fighting of the light infantry, the historical details of the action and the results of the archaeological surveys. We end with a discussion on battlefield archaeology and some conclusions.