First Evidence of Collective Human Inhumation from the Cardial Neolithic (Cova Bonica, Barcelona, NE Iberian Peninsula)

Oms, F. Xavier; Daura, Joan; Sanz, Montserrat; Mendiela, Susana; Pedró, Mireia; Martínez, Pablo

doi:10.1080/00934690.2016.1260407

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…the Catalonia region, appears to be another good source of comparison (north-western Spain's transition to Neolithic occurring later in the 5 th millennium, Robb 2015: 972), with several well-studied cave burials dated to the 6 th millennium. A striking example is the recently re-analysed and radiocarbon dated Cova Bonica (Vallirana, Barcelona: Oms et al, 2017a), along with Cova Foradada (Calafell, Tarragona: Oms et al, 2016) and Cova de Can Sadurní (Edo et al, 2011(Edo et al, , 2017: in these sites, a depositional practice comparable to that of Mora Cavorso Cave has been recognised, with the bodies of all age classes and probably both sexes (Oms et al, 2017a) being laid directly on the cave floor and later moved (causing skeletal disarticulation and bone piling) to make space for the new ones. Although Oms et al (2017b) raise some doubts about the nature of grave goods of the artefacts found in association with chaotically distributed human bones, they confirm the overall scarcity of these, which is a recurring feature also in other early Neolithic burial sites of the Iberian Peninsula and in the rest of Europe.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grotta Mora Cavorso: Physical, material and symbolic boundaries of life and death practices in a Neolithic cave of central Italy

Silvestri

Achino

Gatta

et al. 2020

Quaternary International

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grotta Mora Cavorso: Physical, material and symbolic boundaries of life and death practices in a Neolithic cave of central Italy

Silvestri

Achino

Gatta

et al. 2020

Quaternary International

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“…Archaeological work in the last decade has broadened our understanding of the spread of Neolithic way of life in the uplands of the Southern Central Pyrenees [22,23,25,33,88,89,98,100,101]. Traditionally, such high altitude mountain areas were mainly considered as transit zones [102,103].…”

Section: Caprine Mobile Herding and Management: Implications For The mentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Neolithic caprine husbandry in the Central Pyrenees: Insights from a multi-proxy study at Els Trocs cave (Bisaurri, Spain)

et al. 2021

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Sheep remains constitute the main archaeozoological evidence for the presence of Early Neolithic human groups in the highlands of the Southern Pyrenees but understanding the role of herding activities in the Neolithisation process of this mountain ecosystem calls for the analysis of large and well-dated faunal assemblages. Cova de Els Trocs (Bisaurri, Huesca, Spain), a cave located at 1564 m a.s.l on the southern slopes of the Central Pyrenees, is an excellent case study since it was seasonally occupied throughout the Neolithic (ca. 5312–2913 cal. BC) and more than 4000 caprine remains were recovered inside. The multi-proxy analytical approach here presented has allowed us to offer new data elaborating on vertical mobility practices and herd management dynamics as has not been attempted up until now within Neolithic high-mountain sites in the Iberian Peninsula. For the first time, δ18O and δ13C stable isotope analyses offer direct evidence on both the regular practice of altitudinal movements of sheep flocks and the extended breeding season of sheep. Autumn births are recorded from the second half of the fifth millennium cal. BC onwards. Age-at-death distributions illustrate the progressive decline in caprine perinatal mortality together with the rising survival rate of individuals older than six months of age and the larger frequency of adults. This trend alongside the ‘off-season’ lambing signal at the implementation of husbandry techniques over time, probably aiming to increase the size of the flocks and their productivity. Palaeoparasitological analyses of sediment samples document also the growing reliance on herding activities of the human groups visiting the Els Trocs cave throughout the Neolithic sequence. In sum, our work provides substantial arguments to conclude that the advanced herding management skills of the Early Neolithic communities arriving in Iberia facilitated the anthropisation process of the subalpine areas of the Central Pyrenees.

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“…Neither area shows systematic gender differentiation (Fowler 2010; Sjögren 2015). The Iberian Early Neolithic featured collective inhumations in cave sites among other practices; again, gendered differentiation in funerary practice or grave goods is difficult to detect (Oms et al 2017).…”

Section: Gender In the European Neolithicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming Gendered in European Prehistory: Was Neolithic Gender Fundamentally Different?

Robb

Harris

2017

Am. Antiq.

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It is notable how little gender archaeology has been written for the European Neolithic, in contrast to the following Bronze Age. We cannot blame this absence on a lack of empirical data or on archaeologists’ theoretical naïveté. Instead, we argue that this absence reflects the fact that gender in this period was qualitatively different in form from the types of gender that emerged in Europe from about 3000 cal BC onwards; the latter still form the norm in European and American contexts today, and our standard theories and methodologies are designed to uncover this specific form of gender. In Bronze Age gender systems, gender was mostly binary, associated with stable, lifelong identities expressed in recurrent complexes of gendered symbolism. In contrast, Neolithic gender appears to have been less firmly associated with personal identity and more contextually relevant; it slips easily through our methodological nets. In proposing this “contextual gender” model for Neolithic gender, we both open up new understandings of gender in the past and present and pose significant questions for our models of gender more widely.

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First Evidence of Collective Human Inhumation from the Cardial Neolithic (Cova Bonica, Barcelona, NE Iberian Peninsula)

Cited by 18 publications

References 29 publications

Grotta Mora Cavorso: Physical, material and symbolic boundaries of life and death practices in a Neolithic cave of central Italy

Grotta Mora Cavorso: Physical, material and symbolic boundaries of life and death practices in a Neolithic cave of central Italy

Investigating Neolithic caprine husbandry in the Central Pyrenees: Insights from a multi-proxy study at Els Trocs cave (Bisaurri, Spain)

Becoming Gendered in European Prehistory: Was Neolithic Gender Fundamentally Different?

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