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Mesolithic human remains at Cueva de Nerja (Málaga, Spain): anthropological, isotopic and radiocarbon data

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Abstract

The Iberian Peninsula is one of the European regions with the highest number of documented Mesolithic burials so far. For more than a century, many research projects have been carried out by several national and international teams, that have located most of these burials in three different geographical areas: Valencia region, northern Spain and the Portuguese estuaries of the Rivers Muge and Sado. Only one inhumation from this period is known in the south of Spain. It was discovered in Nerja Cave (Málaga), an exceptional site with continuous occupations during different periods of prehistory. This burial of a woman, known as ‘Pepita’, is rarely cited in the academic world, probably because the first radiocarbon date was obtained with the conventional 14C method and the result would not be acceptable today. In recent years, the new AMS dates have shown that the Mesolithic chronology was correct. In consequence, a new series of analyses have studied anthropological, diet and mobility aspects of the female in detail. These have provided new information about the time in which Mesolithic communities began to practice a funerary model based on burials in graves, but also about her diet, mobility strategies and possible relationships with other groups. The chronological data show that this is one of the earliest Mesolithic burials in the Western Mediterranean and the diet was based on the consumption of terrestrial animal protein along with marine resources. This type of diet has been found in other contemporary individuals in the east of the Iberian Peninsula.

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Notes

  1. The terms Mesolithic and Epipalaeolithic are used in the literature. To avoid confusion, and without entering into a debate on the different concepts, the term Mesolithic will be used in a generic sense.

  2. The laboratory code does not appear in the article in which this date was published and therefore it cannot be given here.

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Acknowledgements

The 1982 excavation was one of the last archaeological activities funded by the Cueva de Nerja Trust and authorised by the Ministry of Education and Culture. Later work has been carried out under the custody of the Culture Department of the Government of Andalusia. Strontium analyses were financed by the Institutional Strategy of the University of Tübingen (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, ZUK 63) and the MWK Research Seed Capital RiSC Programme from the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and Arts. Corina Knipper, Sandra Kraus, Sigrid Klaus and Bernd Höppner at the Curt Engelhorn Center Archaeometry gGmbH, Mannheim, Germany are kindly thanked for the processing and measurement of strontium isotope samples. We are especially thankful to Museo de Nerja and Cueva de Nerja Foundation.

Funding

This research was funded by the projects HAR2011-23149, HAR2015-67323-C2-1-P, HAR2015-67323-C2-2-P and HAR2016-75201-P of the Spanish Science and Innovation Ministry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Investigación de la Cueva de Nerja, Málaga, Spain

    Luis-Efren Fernández

  2. Departamento de Historia, Universidad de Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain

    José Luis Sanchidrián

  3. Department of Legal Medicine, Toxicology and Physical Anthropology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Sylvia A. Jiménez-Brobeil

  4. Regirarocs, S.L., Lleida, Spain

    Gerard Remolins

  5. Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte und Archäologie des Mittelalters, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Marta Díaz-Zorita

  6. Departamento de Historia, Arte y Geografía, Universidad de Vigo, Espagne, avec la collaboration Institut für Geowissenschaften, Biogeologie-Gruppe, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Berta Morell

  7. Grup de Recerca en Antropologia Biològica, Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal i d’Ecologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Maria Eulàlia Subirà

  8. Departamento de Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología, Universidad del País Vasco, Leioa, Spain/UMR 5199 PACEA, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France

    Diego López-Onaindía

  9. Department of Legal Medicine, Toxicology and Physical Anthropology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Rosa M. Maroto

  10. Department of Legal Medicine, Toxicology and Physical Anthropology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    María G. Roca

  11. Department of Legal Medicine, Toxicology and Physical Anthropology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Carmen M. Román

  12. Centro Nacional de Aceleradores, Universidad de Sevilla, CSIC, Junta de Andalucía, Sevilla, Spain

    Francisco Javier Santos

  13. Grupo InDi: Investigación y Divulgación en Arqueología, Institució Milá i Fontanals (IMF-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

    Juan F. Gibaja

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Correspondence to Juan F. Gibaja.

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We refer to ‘formal burials’. In Spain and Portugal, there are a few examples of older Mesolithic with not scattered human remains found in archaeological layers.

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Fernández, LE., Sanchidrián, J.L., Jiménez-Brobeil, S.A. et al. Mesolithic human remains at Cueva de Nerja (Málaga, Spain): anthropological, isotopic and radiocarbon data. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 12, 250 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01207-x

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