Archaeologists unearthed four layers of occupation: a thin top layer with a few artifacts from historical periods indicating it was barely used, an oldest layer consisting solely of charcoal fragments and two middle layers with dense remains of combustion pits, animal bones, ceramic vessels and an extraordinary assemblage of green mineral fragments believed to be malachite.
“Many of these fragments are thermally altered, while other materials in the cave are not, which clearly suggests that fire played an important role in their processing and that there was a deliberate intention behind it,” said Dr Julia Montes-Landa of the University of Granada, co-author. “In other words, they weren’t burned by accident.”
The hearths cut across each other, indicating that the visitors reused this space frequently, but are still distinct, which suggests that those visits were separated by plenty of time. Radiocarbon dating puts the hearth found in the second layer at about 3,000 years old, while the hearths in the third layer are around 5,500 to 4,000 years old.
“For a long time, high-mountain environments were seen as marginal, places prehistoric communities passed through occasionally,” said Prof Carlos Tornero of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. “But we found a really rich archaeological sequence, including multiple combustion structures and a very large number of green mineral fragments. We can’t say exactly how long people stayed each time, but the repeated use of the space and the density of remains suggest occupations that were short to medium in duration, but happening again and again over long periods of time.”
The study has been published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology and can be read in its entirety here.
* This article was originally published here
