The management of bone tools from the Bronze Age site of El Portalón of Cueva Mayor, Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos

In this paper we analyze the set of Bronze Age bone tools recovered at the archaeological site of El Portalón of Cueva Mayor in the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos). The Bronze Age cultural period is the best represented in the cavity and its study has forced us to unify the different excavation and stratigraphical criteria undertaken from the earliest archaeological excavations developed by J.M. Apellániz during the 70s until the excavations of the current research team (EIA) since 2000. We propose here for the first time a relationship between the initial system of “beds” used by Apellániz and our recent sedimentary sequence that recognizes eleven stratigraphic levels radiometrically dated from the late Upper Pleistocene to the Middle Age. Within the bone industry assemblage we recognize a large variety of utensils and ornamental elements, with native and allochthonous features, that make evident a regional as well as long distance relationships of these populations of the interior of the Iberian Peninsula during the recent Prehistory.

La cerámica del yacimiento arqueológico de Castillejo del Bonete (Terrinches, Ciudad Real). Estudio morfológico y tecnólogico

El presente trabajo incluye el estudio de un amplio conjunto cerámico perteneciente al yacimiento arqueológico de la Edad del Cobre y Edad del Bronce de Castillejo del Bonete. La muestra fue recuperada de distintas áreas del asentamiento durante la campaña de excavación de 2012. La investigación ha tenido como fin conocer mejor la relación forma-función de las vasijas, su proceso de fabricación, así como el modelo productivo y las posibles manifestaciones simbólicas presentes en el repertorio analizado. La metodología utilizada para cumplir con los objetivos se ha basado en la recopilación de datos, considerando una serie de variables morfológicas y tecnológicas, y su procesamiento con el empleo de técnicas estadísticas sencillas.

Argaric Sociology: Sex and Death

The detailed, rich and diverse Argaric funerary record offers an opportunity to explore social dimensions that usually remain elusive for prehistoric research, such us social rules on kinship rights and obligations, sexual tolerance and the role of funerary practices in preserving the economic and political organization. This paper addresses these topics through an analysis of the social meaning of Argaric double tombs by looking at body treatment and composition of grave goods assemblages according to gender and class affiliation. The Argaric seems to have been a conservative society, scarcely tolerant regarding homosexuality, and willing to celebrate ancestry associated to certain places as a means of asserting residence and property rights.

Estrategias de visibilización y procesos de identificación boliviana en la prensa gráfica y en la red social Facebook, en dos ciudades del centro de la provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Los usos y las formas de identificación intra y extra grupo a través de los medios de comunicación son aspectos escasamente explorados en los estudios sobre las identidades en ciudades de tipo intermedias del centro de la provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Por ello, el objetivo de este trabajo consiste en analizar y discutir los modos en que se visibilizan y construyen las representaciones y manifestaciones de los inmigrantes y descendientes bolivianos, específicamente en la red social Facebook y en la prensa gráfica local de las ciudades de Olavarría y Azul. Se pretende contribuir a la comprensión de la manera en que se producen los diversos discursos y saberes de estos grupos, así como identificar a estos medios de comunicación como instrumentos que posibilitan intervenir desde otros espacios de reconocimiento y legitimidad.

What is this thing called Historical Archaeology?

Historical archaeology, in its narrow temporal sense -as an archaeology of the emergence and subsequent evolution of the Modern world- is steadily taking pace in Spanish academia. This paper aims at provoking a more robust debate through understanding how Spanish historical archaeology is placed in the international scene and some of its more relevant particularities. In so doing, the paper also stresses the strong links that have united historical and prehistorical archaeology since its inception, both in relation to the ontological, epistemological and methodological definition of the first as to the influence of socio-political issues in the latter. Such reflection is partly a situated reflection from prehistory as one of the paper’s authors has been a prehistorian for most of her professional life.

GIS technologies and spatial organization patterns among hunter-gatherers: an archaeological case study from Southern Patagonia (southern South America)

This paper discusses some aspects of hunter-gatherer spatial organization in southern South Patagonia, in later times to 10,000 cal yr BP. Various methods of spatial analysis, elaborated with a Geographic Information System (GIS) were applied to the distributional pattern of archaeological sites with radiocarbon dates. The shift in the distributional pattern of chronological information was assessed in conjunction with other lines of evidence within a biogeographic framework. Accordingly, the varying degrees of occupation and integration of coastal and interior spaces in human spatial organization are explained in association with the adaptive strategies hunter-gatherers have used over time. Both are part of the same human response to changes in risk and uncertainty variability in the region in terms of resource availability and environmental dynamics.

The Neolithic of El Niño cave (Ayna, Albacete) in the Sierra del Segura context

Since its excavation in the summer of 1973, El Niño cave has been considered a key site to understand the process of production economy and pottery technology introduction in South-eastern Iberian Peninsula, and especially to approach how such process could have affected people already settled in the Segura mountains. However, data from El Niño cave was very fragmentary, due to the lack of a broad study of Neolithic occupations of the site. In this paper, we present the analysis of pottery, lithic industry and faunal remains, as well as the existing dates from the site´s Holocene levels. The review of different evidence from the site allows suggesting that El Niño cave would have probably acted as a hunting and shepherding station, being a logistical site of larger places. However, limitations due to the fact that we are dealing with a 40- year-old excavation, prevent specifying how the process of Neolithic introduction in the Segura Mountains occurred.

Late Bronze Age in Eastern Iberian Peninsula: Archaeological Bases and Periodization

Research surrounding the transition from II to I millennium cal BC in Eastern Iberian Peninsula has a large and extensive tradition of investigation. However, the chances to do research on this historical process have been limited by the lack of a well contextualized and dated stratigraphic sequence. For this reason, recent studies in this topic have followed the periodic proposals which were developed in closer regions and areas, especially in the South East and North East of the Peninsula. The investigation perspective about the Late Bronze in Eastern Iberian has however now improved, with the development of several archaeological investigations, the increase in the number of sites being dated and more recent studies into the region helping to bring about this change. As such, it is now in the correct state to be able to propose a new periodization and delve into the changes which occurred in the transition between 1500 and 725 cal BC.

Cova dels Jurats at Calescoves (Alaior, Minorca). A Cave Shrine in the Talayotic context?

Excavations carried out in the Cova dels Jurats between 2010 and 2012 served to establish that, unlike the rest of the caves Calescoves, this one functioned as a sanctuary, with two different phases. The first one corresponds to the Final Talayotic Period, as the first cave shrine documented in the Talayotic culture. In Roman times, the place was still used as a sanctuary, but with a totally different ritual, linked to the inscriptions discovered at the entrance of the cave.