Funerary activity in the caves of the Western Pyrenees during the Late Prehistory: new radiocarbon dates of human remains

Abstract

Caves have been often used as funerary space through most European Prehistory, although the frequency of the mortuary events are highly variable over the time. This is clearly visible in the archaeological record of the Western Pyrenees, a territory with a large number of caves. Human remains have been mostly documented on the surface of the caves in apparent association with other elements of the material culture, and thus the chronology of these funerary events has been traditionally based on typological association. However, it is difficult to establish robust associations between archaeological materials recorded on the surface. The ambiguity of these contexts has resulted in generalistic interpretations, described as collective funerary events attributed to the “Eneolithic”, “Chalcolithic” o “Bronze Age”. In this contribution we present the chronological analysis of the funerary use of caves in the Western Pyrenees based on new and previously published dates obtained of human bone collagen. Chronological models have been elaborated to examine and understand the funerary phenomenon in this region.The results suggest that this phenomenon is recorded since the Mesolithic and it persists until the Bronze Age, although the frequency and characteristics of this funerary use changed during this long time period.