Use of cinnabar in funerary practices in the Central Pyrenees. Analysis of pigments on bones from the prehistoric burial of the Cueva de la Sierra cave in Campodarbe (Huesca, Spain)

Abstract

The appearance of red pigments in prehistoric burial sites is frequent. In the study presented herein, the composition and provenance of the pigment sprinkled in a burial dated between the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic periods in the Cueva de la Sierra, in Campodarbe (Huesca, Spain), were characterized through X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, and sulfur (δ34S) isotope analysis. The chemical composition of the pigment used in the burial could be unequivocally established as cinnabar, and the S isotope signature pointed to an origin in the ores of the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula, ca. 500 km far from the burial site, suggesting an alternative provenance to the Almadén outcrop, the main cinnabar source in the Iberian Peninsula. The presence of cinnabar in the Ebro valley, on the southern slope of the Central Pyrenees, forces us to rethink the complex processes of interaction between communities that populated the north of the Iberian Peninsula during the final moments of the 4th millennium BC.