Living with the Dead: Intramural Burials in the Bronze Age of Southern Spain Martin Bartelheim Mitteilungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte Beiheft 3 (2024) https://doi.org/10.30819/mbgaeu.b45.11     pp: 191-202     2025-01-14

Living with the Dead: Intramural Burials in the Bronze Age of Southern Spain

Stichworte/keywords: Iberian Peninsula, El Argar, Early and Middle Bronze Age, social structure

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Abstract
Although rare in prehistoric Europe, intramural burials are the rule during the Early and Middle Bronze Age in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, where they are best explored in the region of the southeast Spanish El Argar area. They are usually single or double graves that were set into buildings or between them. This phenomenon begins suddenly after ca 2200 BC with the transition to the Bronze Age, following a two millennia-old tradition of collective burials, often in megaliths. Only a few cases of the continued use of megaliths into the Bronze Age have been observed. In general, the construction of the intramural graves seems to constitute an integrative part of a new settlement pattern of narrowly packed residences in defensive positions, with only a few installations outside. The phenomenon of burials in living spaces persists until the late 16th century BC, when archaeological manifestations of the treatment of the deceased remained generally absent in large parts of the Iberian Peninsula until the Early Iron Age.