Mortuary multiplicity: Variability in mortuary treatment at a Late Prehistoric matrix village from Spain

Summary

At 113 ha, Marroquíes Bajos (Jaén, Spain) is one of the largest villages known for the Iberian Copper Age. Attention was first focused on the site in the 1960s after construction work underneath the modern city of Jaén unearthed a series of elaborate artificial burial caves. However, over the past several decades salvage excavations revealed even more mortuary areas at the site, including commingled depositions in enclosure ditches, primary and secondary inhumations in discrete subterranean mortuary areas, and clusters of poorly defined, fragmentary, and commingled deposits. Bioarchaeological analysis of this variability in mortuary treatment is key to reconstructing the social organization and historical trajectory of this early matrix village, and is particularly important for understanding the development of social inequalities that may have contributed to the settlement’s eventual decline. Here, I discuss the multiple lines of evidence that can be used to unpack the variability in mortuary behavior at this Late Prehistoric village, ranging from quantitative dental and skeletal approaches, assessments of age and MNI, consideration of contextual evidence from the Spanish gray literature, biochemical approaches to diet and mobility, and radiocarbon dating of remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Buried, Burned, Bundled and Broken: Approaches to Co-Occurrence of Multiple Methods, Treatments and Styles of Burials Within Past Societies

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