Is it symbolic? A possible four-year-old trophy head from the Iron Age (el Palomar, Oliete, Spain)

Abstract

Since the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age, there is evidence of the collections of heads of deceased individuals as a social tool in Western Europe, and specifically in the Iberian Peninsula. This is evident in collective burials, where the skulls are piled in concrete zones, or where they are missing. In addition, this phenomenon became notably widespread in the Iberian region and the meridional Gaulle with the practice of the “nailed heads” during the second Iron Age. This practice is already recorded since the ancient Greco-Latin texts. According to previous studies, except for a few individuals aged 15-18 years old at the time of death, these nailed-heads would correspond to adult individuals and interpreted as individuals in military-capacity ages. Recent studies have also suggested that these heads were not only cut and nailed, but also embalmed, suggesting great care of the treatment. The Iron-Age village of El Palomar de Oliete (Teruel, Iberian Peninsula) was excavated between 1977-1981, these works uncovered a well-structured neighborhood consisting of 11 houses and different warehouses from the III-I centuries BCE. Inside 6 of these houses, the excavations recovered the burials of 21 perinates and one fetal individual under the floor. Here we present the case of an isolated cranium of a four-year-old individual found in “House 6”, one of the houses where perinate individuals were also buried. This cranium was buried in the main room of the house under graveled sediment. The bone preservation and taphonomic analyses suggest that the head was removed from the rest of the body while soft tissue was still preserved. In addition, micro-CT imaging has allowed us to diagnose one potential blunt trauma on the base of the cranium. Finally, we have conducted radiocarbon dates and genomic analyses to determine the chronology and sex of this unusual but probably symbolic burial.