Archaeologists working near the southern Spanish town of Teba announced the discovery of a 5,000-year-old stone monument, Dolmen I of the La Lentejuela necropolis, a collective tomb containing multiple burials and funerary objects fashioned from ivory, amber, and marine shells. The structure measured 13 meters long and was divided into several chambers, an architectural layout rarely seen in Iberian prehistory, according to Live Science.
During four excavation campaigns, the team documented a well-preserved collective tomb, La Razón reported. Inside they recorded ossuaries together with grave goods such as arrowheads, large blades, and a halberd that symbolized power, signs of the high status of the interred individuals, the newspaper added.
The fieldwork was led by Eduardo Vijande, associate professor of prehistory at the University of Cádiz, and Serafín Becerra, director of the Museum of Teba, both members of the Thalassa research group. “We may be talking about one of the most monumental and complete dolmens in all of Andalusia,” said Becerra, according to Live Science. “The extraordinary state of conservation will allow us to know in great detail the ways of life and beliefs of these communities,” said Vijande, according to La Razón.
The presence of seashells beside the ossuaries drew particular interest. “The presence of seashells in an inland area reflects the importance of the sea as an element of prestige and the existence of long-distance exchange networks,” said Juan Jesús Cantillo, a prehistory professor at the University of Cádiz, according to Live Science. Rossiyskaya Gazeta noted that the distant origin of raw materials such as ivory, amber, and shells confirmed that settlements in the region participated in major trade routes of the Bronze Age.
Archaeologists described the walls of the dolmen as being formed by two-meter-high vertical slabs, or orthostats. “The entire dolmen was also covered by horizontal large stone slabs, and on top of this covering there was a tumulus of sand and small stones,” said Vijande, according to Live Science. Rossiyskaya Gazeta remarked that the structure’s complexity and elegance set it apart from many of the more than 4,000 prehistoric dolmens scattered across Spain.
The excavation formed part of the project Monumentality, Time, and Society: The Megalithic Phenomenon in the La Lentejuela Necropolis, authorized by the Ministry of Culture and Historical Heritage of the Junta de Andalucía and financed by the Town Hall of Teba. The University of Cádiz supplied logistical and equipment support, and the Palarq Foundation collaborated on archaeometric analyses. Adolfo Moreno, professor of prehistory at the University of Almería, joined the most recent campaign, which also served as a training platform for history students from the University of Cádiz.
Research on the dolmen and its contents remained ongoing, and the team said “the search is far from over,” according to Live Science. Future laboratory work will examine the human remains, the sourcing of exotic raw materials, and the technological production of the weaponry and ornaments.
While dolmens are best known as prehistoric tombs, they sometimes functioned as territorial markers, ritual sites, or solar observatories; some were aligned with the summer solstice, Live Science noted in unrelated studies. Comparable sites include Spain’s Dolmen of Guadalperal, now usually submerged beneath a reservoir, and England’s Arthur’s Stone.
Vijande believed that insights from La Lentejuela would contribute to debates about social hierarchy, land ownership, and long-distance trade in the third millennium BCE. He emphasized that the tomb’s preservation gave scholars a rare chance to reconstruct the ceremonial life and regional connections of the communities that once lived in southern Iberia.
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