So far, 18 tombs dating from 7th and 6th centuries BC have been discovered during the excavations

 

The Cortijo de Acebedo farm continues to discover and dust off itmany treasures. The investigatioof the Phoenician necropolis discovered at this site continues witits anthropological study phaseallowing us to reconstruct details about the people who lived in this area of Mijas between the 7th and 6th centuries BC.

During the research phase of the results obtained in the excavations carried out by Historical Heritage at the Cortijo de Acebedo site, the analysis of the skeletal remains of the different individuals that have appeared in the different tombs of the Phoenician necropolis is being carried out with the objective of compiling a series of data that will help us reveal details about their customs, beliefs, daily life, social status, etc.

“We continue to unravel the treasures that Cortijo de Acebedo holds, a site that, little by little, is becoming a reference not only in the province but throughout Andalusia”, said the mayor of Mijas, Josele González (PSOE).

The mayor added that “progress continues to be made in the anthropological study of the 18 tombs that have been found to date and, for this, we will once again have one of the most qualified archaeo-anthropologists in the country, Victoria Peña, in Mijas”.

In this regard, the councillor for Historical Heritage at the Mijas Town Hall, Nicolás Cruz (PSOE), explained that this anthropological study “reconstructs the body of the deceased to find out their gender, age at death, illnesses or any other particularity that allows us to reconstruct how these people lived in Mijas at that time”.

The councillor said that the study is yielding “surprising results given that we are finding funerary rituals that differ from other settlements in Málaga, Cádiz and Huelva”.

This meticulous and detailed work is carried out by the archaeo-anthropologist Victoria Peña Romo who, fragment by fragment, reconstructs the body of the deceased and delves into the knowledge of the individual.

“What is perhaps not so common in this type of study is to analyse how they were buried, if there is a ritual that differentiates them, and we are seeing interesting things that mean that either this necropolis is different from other necropolises with the same chronology and culturally similar, or they have not been studied to the extent that we are doing”, added Peña, who stressed: “we are working to make Cortijo de Acebedo a reference site in terms of study”.

 

FUNERAL RITUAL

The team found that approximately fifteen of the burials were primary cremation burials, in which the cremation of the deceased took place in the grave itself. The rest of the burial sites are secondary cremations, i.e. the cremation of the deceased in a pyre or ‘ustrinum’, with the skeletal remains being moved to be deposited in an urn or in a grave.

 

Source: Mijas Comunicación S.A.