Stone Age · c. 4300–2300 BC · Valdelasilla, Illescas, Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Inland Spain's oldest monumental cemetery dated to 6,000 years ago near Toledo
Dates on human bones show the planned cemetery, with a central tomb inside a 36-metre ditch, was laid out in the late fifth millennium BC.
Peer-reviewed paper
Valdelasilla, Illescas, Spain New radiocarbon dates show that Neolithic tombs at Valdelasilla, in central Spain, form the oldest monumental cemetery yet documented in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula. The site is in Illescas, in the province of Toledo. A planned group of chamber tombs built of wood, clay and stone was laid out there at the end of the fifth millennium BC, around 6,000 years ago. The cemetery was still receiving the dead in the Copper Age.
Rosa Barroso Bermejo of the University of Alcalá led the study, with colleagues from several Spanish universities and research centres. It is published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
The new dates challenge an established view. That view holds that megalithic tomb building reached the Meseta, the high central plateau of Spain, only later, from the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts.
Archaeologists excavated the site in 2020 ahead of urban development. The burials lay under topsoil that farming had disturbed for decades. The team removed the first 20 centimetres by machine. They then dug each structure by hand down to the natural rock.
They recorded fifteen structures with human remains in two areas. The higher zone is what the team calls the main necropolis. In the lower zone, to the south, burials were laid out less regularly.
A central tomb inside a 36-metre ring ditch
The central tomb, VLD-T450, is a circular chamber originally about six metres across. Its walls were later reinforced with compacted earth, small stones, clay and timber. This reduced the chamber to no more than 4.5 metres across.
A circular ditch ran around the tomb, with an internal diameter of 36 metres and an entrance to the south-east. The ditch was 1 to 1.40 metres wide and up to 90 centimetres deep. It held stones, pottery, stone tools and burnt animal bones, but no human remains.
The ditch could not be dated directly. Its entrance lines up with the tomb's, however, so the authors treat the two as one design. No comparable enclosure around such early tombs was known from earlier Meseta excavations.
An adult woman lay on the lower level of the chamber, flexed on her right side. Bone pins and an awl lay beneath her head. Around her were the scattered bones of a second adult woman, stained with red pigment, together with stone beads and pendants.
The tomb also held more than a hundred marine shells of the genus Antalis. They are the only raw material that the analyses do not place as local or regional.
A layer of compact sediment and stones sealed this lower level. Above it lay an adult man and the mixed remains of six more people.
Smaller tombs stood nearby. VLD-T451, 18.5 metres north of the enclosure, held two adult men. VLD-T452 contained at least three people with red pigment. It also held a semicircle of charcoal that the team reads as the remains of a wooden roof.
VLD-T296 lies about 140 metres away. It is an oval tomb closed with large stones. It held a man and a woman, both flexed on their right sides, with the woman partly resting against the man.
A child in VLD-T67 had no grave goods. The authors think this may reflect the child's age.
Dated from the human bones
Many dates for Iberian megaliths come from charcoal or other material with no secure tie to the burials. At Valdelasilla the team obtained 21 radiocarbon dates, mostly from human bones. They gave priority to skulls and jaws of identified individuals. Poor collagen preservation limited the total.
The researchers used Bayesian modelling. This statistical method combines radiocarbon results with the known order of deposits to narrow the dates.
The model divides the cemetery's use into five phases. In the first phase the main tombs were built and first used. It began between 4336–4062 BC and ended between 3945–3849 BC, lasting between 138 and 449 years.
The earliest burials happened "possibly within the same generation, suggesting a structured plan for the cemetery with chambers of different types and dimensions," the authors write.
The final phase came in the third millennium BC. Human remains were then placed in four postholes inside the enclosure, perhaps in a single event. A new chamber away from the original core, VLD-T272, became an ossuary for 17 people. Ten skulls were deliberately set around its edge.
The researchers found few signs of social rank in the grave goods. The central tomb did hold more ornaments than the others. The differences in tomb architecture are much clearer.
From this, the authors suggest that social and ideological distinctions were already established. Economic inequality, in their view, was at an earlier stage.
The long-favoured model places the first megaliths in north-west France in the second half of the fifth millennium BC. From there they spread along the coasts, probably by sea. Barroso Bermejo and her colleagues argue instead for several interconnected centres, inland as well as coastal.
They point to late fifth-millennium dates from monuments in the northern Meseta and the Tagus valley. Those dates were once dismissed as unreliable. The researchers say they now find support in the Valdelasilla bones.
The purpose of the ditch is still open. The team suggests it may have been a clay quarry for building the tomb, or the edge of a vanished earthen mound. It may also have been a boundary between the living and the dead.
A hut, VLD-66, was found close to the child's grave. The researchers consider it probably contemporary with the tombs. It has not yet been directly dated.
Sources
- The Oldest Monumental Megalithic Necropolis of the Interior of the Iberian Peninsula, Dated to the 5th Millennium BC, Found in Toledo (La Brújula Verde)
- 6,000-Year-Old Tombs in Toledo Reveal Inland Iberia’s Oldest Known Monumental Necropolis (Arkeonews)
Paper: Barroso Bermejo R, Bueno-Ramírez P, Cerrillo-Cuenca E, et al. New Dates for the Emergence of the Megalithic Phenomenon on the Iberian Plateau: The Funerary Practices of Valdelasilla, Toledo (Spain). Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2026: 1-19. doi:10.1017/S0959774326100559
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