Alarcos (Ciudad Real) Castilla La Mancha discovers first Iberian necropolis with human bones


Detail of the singular grave where the human skeletal remains have been found. - Photo: Rueda Villaverde.


The group of students from the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), who have been taking part since last week in the annual excavation campaign in the Alarcos Archaeological Park, can feel privileged. They are the first to consolidate their knowledge and accumulate experience in the Iberian necropolis discovered in the area just a few months ago, the third one located in this unique environment and the most important for its size and for being in an optimal state of preservation. But, in addition, they are being exceptional witnesses and direct accomplices of a unique finding, which has excited the entire excavation team led by Professor Rosario García Huerta. This is the location of a tomb with human bone remains (skulls and long bones), the first to be found in Iberian necropolis dating from the Iron Age (6th to 1st centuries BC).



The uniqueness of this finding, "very important", as García Huerta (left) describes it, lies in the possibility of analyzing these bones through their DNA, "in order to know specific data on the age of the individuals, sex, origin and even possible paleopathologies, and to have a possible explanation as to why the remains were buried without cremating them first".

This is something that until now has not been possible to do in an Iberian necropolis, since traditionally this people buried the remains of their deceased after cremation, hence no bones had been found in any tomb until now, forcing researchers to date their origin only through the funerary urns in which the ashes were deposited and the grave goods that were introduced into the grave.


Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Rabadán and Isabel Serio work on the outlining of the bones found in the new necropolis.


"These materials give us a lot of information because from them we can infer spiritual elements of the Iberian culture, as well as aspects about demography, population and the diversity of social strata,"

"We don't know what this could be due to. The truth is that we are surprised because it is something unique, an unprecedented finding in an Iberian settlement," says the director of the excavation, which has already sent several of these skeletal remains to be analyzed at the prestigious Harvard University, through the leading specialist on ancient DNA analysis in Spain, the biologist Carles Lalueza Fox. The results of these analyses will soon be available to satisfy the great expectation that this discovery has generated in the entire excavation team of the UCLM, also formed by professors Antonio de Juan, Diego Lucendo, David Rodríguez, Javier Morales and Pedro Miguel, who have been joined as collaborators by Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Rabadán and Isabel Serio.



Rodríguez Rabadán, a graduate in History from the UCLM and a student of the master's degree in research, is in his fourth excavation campaign at Alarcos and confesses to feeling "lucky". "This is unique, and to be able to work it with my own hands is sensational. It is the most relevant thing I have ever excavated," says this future researcher and archaeologist, a scholar of the Iberian world, who shares with the whole team the enthusiasm generated by this unique archaeological discovery on the slopes of the Alarcos hill, a geographical enclave full of history that never ceases to surprise those who have spent years recovering it with patience and care.


UCLM students working on the excavated tombs. - Photo: Rueda Villaverde.


The singular Iberian grave with human skeletal remains is only one of the dozens of burials that have been found, to date, in this third necropolis that has emerged in the vicinity of the hill of Alarcos; undoubtedly, the most important of all and the one that presents a better state of preservation.

It covers 6,000 square meters in which more than a hundred tombs have been located, of which only 30 have been excavated. As Rosario García Huerta points out, "it is a site with an unknown potential as yet, since at the moment we are only working on a first superficial level, waiting to really know the burials that may be underneath, and with many years of work ahead of us".



If the first Iberian necropolis of Alarcos was located in the eighties and the second one began to be excavated in 2014, the one discovered this year is due to a happy coincidence, when the property of the land where it is located tried to plant pistachio trees. The relevant previous study detected the possible archaeological remains, and a specialized monitoring company corroborated the finding and carried out the first work of unearthing pits and burial mounds and perimetry for three months.



In the absence of the administrative procedure of the transfer of ownership of the land to the Junta de Comunidades and the fencing of the area, the group of students of the UCLM will use these two weeks of excavation campaign (ends this Saturday) to recover ceramic urns, ornaments, rings, fibulae, fusayolas, astragal bones of sacrificed animals and iron weapons, although this is very deteriorated.

Laura Fernández, a 4th year History student from Mota del Cuervo (Cuenca), is making her debut as a trainee archaeologist, in "a very interesting and rewarding job because you see the results of the work, with a good atmosphere among colleagues". Benefits that compensate for the intense heat spent at a site that is possible thanks to the economic funding of the regional government.

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