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Earliest Evidence of Neolithic Collective Burials from Eastern Iberia: Radiocarbon Dating at the Archaeological Site of Les Llometes (Alicante, Spain)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Domingo C Salazar-García ,
Oreto García-Puchol ,
María Paz de Miguel-Ibáñez  and
Sahra Talamo
Domingo C Salazar-García*
Affiliation:
Department of Human Evolution, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. Departament de Prehistòria i Arqueologia, Universitat de València, València, Spain. Department of Archaeogenetics, Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
Oreto García-Puchol
Affiliation:
Departament de Prehistòria i Arqueologia, Universitat de València, València, Spain.
María Paz de Miguel-Ibáñez
Affiliation:
Área de Prehistoria, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain.
Sahra Talamo*
Affiliation:
Department of Human Evolution, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
*
*Corresponding authors. Emails: domingocarlos.salazar@uv.es; sahra.talamo@eva.mpg.de.
*Corresponding authors. Emails: domingocarlos.salazar@uv.es; sahra.talamo@eva.mpg.de.
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Abstract

In the Valencia region of Spain, the dominant use of natural caves for collective burials during the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods has been documented. Collective burials are central to the hypothesis about social relationships in Copper Age societies from Iberia, and key to interpreting kinship-based societies. Les Llometes (Alcoi, Alicante) is one of the biggest collective burial sites existing in eastern Iberia. This article presents the direct 14C dates on 25 skeletal remains at the site. The results indicate that the site was used as a burial place from the end of the 5th millennium cal BC until the end of the 4th millennium cal BC, and is a first milestone for future studies that will shed light on the transition towards social structure through the use of a cemetery space. Moreover, this research is one of the few investigations of Late Neolithic collective burials in Iberia that comprises an extensive accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C data set of almost all the individuals reported at a single site. This case also serves to highlight the utility of revisiting materials from historic excavations by 14C dating all the skeletal remains that define the minimum number of individuals, and therefore ensuring a more complete picture of the prehistoric human record.

Keywords

Late NeolithicIberiahuman burialsAMS 14C
Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 679 - 692
Copyright
© 2016 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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