Tumuli of the Motilla Culture (La Mancha-Spain): Castillejo del Bonete and Bocapucheros, burial caves monumentalised to the stars during the Climatic Event 4.2 cal. ka BP

Abstract

A new class of tumuli has been identified in the south of the Iberian plateau, in the upper basins of the Guadiana and Guadalquivir Rivers, in the interior of Iberia. They were used during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. They consist of the construction of large masonry burial mounds over natural caves. The caves sometimes functioned as burial chambers, but people were also buried in chambers and enclosures built inside the burial mounds, outside and over the caves. Corridors and burial chambers were built with their orientation to the solstices (winter and summer), the equinoxes and also to the constellation of the Southern Cross. In some cases, several burial mounds were connected by corridors of tens of metres. In these sites were buried people and objects from distant places; they are central sites, with a high symbolic component for the community that used them. These community monuments were used by the Motilla Culture, the first hydraulic culture in Europe.