From mountain high to valley low: a comparative study of two medieval funerary sites in northwest Navarre

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Basque Archaeology: Current Research and Future Directions" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Excavations conducted by Aditu Arkeologia at the sites of San Miguel de Excelsis and Santa Maria de Zamartze revealed more than 180 inhumated human skeletal remains dating from the eleventh to fifteenth centuries CE. These sites, located within the municipality of Uharte-Arakil (Navarre, Spain), provide a unique opportunity for an inter-site comparison of two contemporaneous skeletal assemblages in close proximity to one another. Few comparative studies of medieval Basque cemetery sites have been undertaken, limiting our understanding of the health and social status, and thus the lived experience, of past Basque communities. This presentation will consider the osteological data and burial archaeology (burial type, location, position of the remains, etc.) of the remains recovered from both San Miguel and Zamartze, reporting on results obtained during fieldwork and post-excavation analyses by Aditu Arkeologia. A particular focus will be given to discussing and comparing the demographic and palaeopathological profiles of the remains against the burial archaeology to infer the health and social status of both populations, identifying any correlations or differences between the two assemblages. In doing so, the lived experience of these individuals will be interpreted and contextualised within the broader cultural landscape of the medieval Basque Country, and Europe.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Interdisciplinary Approaches to Basque Archaeology: Current Research and Future Directions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51629