Seafaring megaliths: A geoarchaeological approach to the Matarrubilla giant stone basin at Valencina (Spain)

17 páginas.- 11 figuras.- 3 tablas.- referencias.- Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.1

A broad multidisciplinary approach is deployed to study an exceptional megalithic feature: the stone basin that presides over the chamber of the Matarrubilla tholos, part of the Valencina Copper Age mega-site (Sevilla, Spain). The study, including geoarchaeological characterisation and sourcing of the stone, traceological analysis of its surfaces based on photogrammetry and morphometrics, digital image analysis as well as OSL dating, leads to a number of substantial findings of great relevance to understand the significance of this stone basin, the only of its kind documented to this date in the Iberian Peninsula, with parallels only in Ireland and Malta. Among the most relevant conclusions, it is worth noting the fact that the gypsiferous cataclasite block the basin was made of was brought from the other side of the marine bay that five thousand years ago extended across the south-east of Valencina, this is the first evidence of waterborne transport of a megalithic stone in the Iberian Peninsula. In addition, the basin appears to have been put where it stands today sometime in the first half of the 4th millennium BC, long before any tholoi were built at Valencina, which suggest a prior history of still poorly documented monumentality at this mega-site

This study was financed by the Andalusian Government and University of Huelva (Group RNM-293). We would like to thank the Atlas research group for their support and the Valencina de la Concepción Town Council for the facilities provided to the research. This work is a contribution to the Research Center in Historical, Cultural and Natural Heritage (CIPHCN) of the University of Huelva. Marta Díaz-Guardamino acknowledges funding for this research from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (M21-0018)

Peer reviewed