title: The emergence of mesolithic cemeteries in SW Europe: insights from the El Collado (Oliva, Valencia, Spain) radiocarbon record.
abstract: Located on the Iberian Mediterranean coast, El Collado is an open-air site where a rescue excavation was conducted over two seasons in 1987 and 1988. The archaeological work excavated a surface area of 143 m2 where 14 burials were discovered, providing skeletal remains from 15 individuals. We have obtained AMS dates for 10 of the 15 individuals by means of the direct dating of human bones. The ranges of the probability distribution of the calibrated dates suggest that the cemetery was used during a long period of time (781-1020 years at a probability of 95.4%). The new dates consequently set back the chrono-cultural attribution of the cemetery from the initial proposal of Late Mesolithic to an older date in the Early Mesolithic. Therefore, El Collado becomes the oldest known cemetery in the Iberian Peninsula, earlier than the numerous Mesolithic funerary contexts documented on the Atlantic façade such as the Portuguese shell-middens in the Muge and Sado Estuaries or the funerary sites on the northern Iberian coast.
authors: Archeology of Social Dynamics, Institución Milá y Fontanals, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IMF-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain.
authors: Juan F
authors: JF
authors: Gibaja
authors: Grup de Recerca Aplicada al Patrimoni Cultural (GRAPAC), Unitat d'Antropologia Biològica, Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal i d'Ecologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain.
authors: M Eulàlia
authors: ME
authors: Subirà
authors: Archeology of Social Dynamics, Institución Milá y Fontanals, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IMF-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain.
authors: Xavier
authors: X
authors: Terradas
authors: Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (Universidad de Sevilla, CSIC, Junta de Andalucía), Sevilla, Spain.
authors: F Javier
authors: FJ
authors: Santos
authors: Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (Universidad de Sevilla, CSIC, Junta de Andalucía), Sevilla, Spain.
authors: Lidia
authors: L
authors: Agulló
authors: Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (Universidad de Sevilla, CSIC, Junta de Andalucía), Sevilla, Spain.
authors: Isabel
authors: I
authors: Gómez-Martínez
authors: Unité Mixte de Recherche, 7041-Archéologies et Sciences de l'Antiquité (ArScAn), Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Nanterre, France.
authors: Florence
authors: F
authors: Allièse
authors: Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), Tarragona, Spain; Área de Prehistoria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain.
authors: Javier
authors: J
authors: Fernández-López de Pablo
mesh_terms: D001106:Archaeology; D055699:Cemeteries; D005060:Europe; D006801:Humans; D055110:Radiometric Dating; D013030:Spain
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