Marta Díaz-Guardamino (Durham): ‘New research on the Montelirio burial costume, Spain’.

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Abstract:
In this seminar I will present the preliminary results of new interdisciplinary research conducted on the burial costumes found in the Copper Age tholos of Montelirio, in Valencina de la Concepción, Seville, southern Spain. With an extension of around 450 ha, Valencina de la Concepción (Seville, Spain) is probably one of the largest (thus called mega-site) and most important Copper Age sites in south-west Europe. The site documents a broad range of structures and remains linked to daily life and specialized activities, including long-distance connections with northern Africa and the Central and Eastern Mediterranean, as well as long-lasting funerary activity, from around 3200 cal BC to 2300 cal BC, involving different types of funerary structures. One of these sites is the Montelirio tholos, a megalith with two chambers covered by mud-vaults and a 44-metre corridor, the longest in Iberia.  Within the large chamber there were twenty individuals (seventeen identified as females) in primary position, six of them dressed in sumptuous costumes made of hundreds of thousands of minute shell beads. There is nothing comparable in the whole of Europe yet, in terms of the type of costumes, the scale of the task of making them, and their association with females.