They confirm the settlement of the cave by humans during the Roman Empire, as well as long before that.

The cave is called “Cova de l’Home Mort” (Cave of the Dead Man) and is located in the town of Soriguera (Pallars Sobira, Lleida, Catalonia).

This year, excavations carried out in the cave by archaeologists from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Spain have uncovered remains of Roman pottery from the end of the Roman Empire (5th century AD), as well as a unique bronze arrowhead more than 3,500 years old. Fragments of pottery were also recovered that correspond to the end of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic eras (between 5,000 and 4,500 years ago), indicating occupation of the cave at different times and making it a key archaeological site for understanding human activity in the High Pyrenees over the millennia.

The archaeologists who carried out the study, from the High Mountain Archaeological Group (GAAM), made up of researchers from UAB and CSIC, stress the importance of the new discoveries.

On the one hand, the discovery of Roman ceramics stands out, some of which were of North African origin. This discovery confirms that the Cova de l’Homme Mort, in addition to the Bronze Age, was a site of human settlement at the end of the Roman Empire (5th century AD) and “unites the data of recent years, which indicate that the Pallars Sobira valleys were not excluded from the historical dynamics of Roman times, as has traditionally been repeatedly pointed out”, says Ermengol Gassiot from the UAB Prehistory Department and director of GAAM.

On the other hand, numerous human remains and objects related to the Bronze Age, aged between 3,500 and 3,600 years, were collected. Among the objects found, there is a large and varied ceramic production, as well as unique objects, among which a bronze arrowhead stands out. “This is a very valuable object for the Pyrenean archaeological heritage, given the scarcity of similar objects found so far,” the researchers specify.

As for human remains, “the first assessment shows a large number of bones of children, although they are also recorded in older people,” explains Xavier Sanchez, an archaeologist from Pallars Sobir and member of GAAM, also the coordinator of this year’s campaign.

Cova de l’Home Mort is a cave with two galleries, located in the Pyrenees, at an altitude of 1,180 meters above sea level. The finds this year were made in all of Gallery 1, the same one in which the site was first documented in 2008 and from which several human remains were recovered, which in 2017 could be dated to between 3,500 and 3,600 years old. The number of human fragments found so far is typical of the funerary character that the cave had for at least 125 years.

Fragments of pottery from the end of the Roman Empire (5th century AD) and an arrowhead from the Bronze Age (between 3,500 and 3,600 years ago) found during excavations this year at the Cova de l’Home Mort (Cave of the Dead Man), in Soriguera. (Images: GAAM/UAB. CC BY-NC 4.0)

To date, the human remains from the Bronze Age documented and dated in the Cova de l’Hom Mort are among the oldest found in the western Pyrenees of Catalonia, and have the same chronology as those found in the burial cave of Montanissel in the municipality of Coll de Nargó (Alt Urgell, known as the Mistress of the Mountains). Its study should contribute to the understanding of the living conditions of human populations in the mountainous and highland areas of the Pyrenees during a period in which the consolidation of anthropogenic impact in the highland environment has been documented.

However, the study of human presence in the cave could extend the time range of this study, since this year’s work has also provided archaeological finds that, by their characteristics, seem to date back to the end of the Neolithic or Chalcolithic, between 5,000 years ago and 4,500 years ago, among which the remains of bell-shaped pottery stand out. “Pending further research, this fact is confirmed by an archaeological sequence spanning several thousand years. This makes it a reference site for the study of human presence in the Pyrenees mountainous areas over the last 5 millennia,” emphasizes Ermengol Gassiot.

This year’s study involved students from UAB’s Faculty of Archaeology. (Source: UAB. CC BY-NC 4.0)