Book The campaniform graves of Humanejos (Parla, Madrid)

The Campaniform graves of Humanejos It is the result of the collaboration of different public and private institutions involved in the conservation, research and dissemination of the rich archaeological heritage of the Community of Madrid. The settlement and necropolis of Humanejos is one of the most important that have been discovered and excavated in recent years in all of Spain, since it offers an enormous wealth of housing and funerary findings on one of the most interesting periods of recent peninsula prehistory and European.

This volume deals with the study of one of the most exciting moments in the history of Europe, which takes place during the second half of the third millennium BC A period of intense contacts and relationships, which created a phenomenon as unique as the Campaniforme, testimony of profound economic, social and ideological transformations, of which the Humanejos necropolis is a magnificent reflection.

The legislation on Historical Heritage of the Community of Madrid and the different archaeological-paleontological protection areas inventoried by the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage in the whole of Madrid made necessary, prior to the urbanization of the land, a series of preventive works that culminated with the discovery of this important archaeological site in 2006. Several excavation campaigns, the creation of a very valuable multidisciplinary team, made up of researchers from prestigious national and international scientific and academic institutions over more than a decade, have made it possible to materialize part of the scientific research that is being developed on the Humanejos field in this monograph.

Thanks to the current legal and institutional framework, it is possible to reconcile the economic activity of a region as prosperous and dynamic as Madrid, which translates into numerous construction works, with the safeguarding of archaeological sites that are discovered in the development of many of them.

Given the relevance of the site and the research team, the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage decided to participate very directly in this research, promoting analytical studies, basically of Carbon14 and DNA, which were unavoidable in cutting-edge research such as the one presented here. In addition to committing to the publication of this monograph with a double objective: on the one hand, that scientific research knows exhaustively these nine burials, through a publication in which great relevance is given to graphic documentation, given the exceptional of the archaeological record and on the other, that it would serve for citizens to know and value their cultural heritage. In short, this book is aimed both at the scientific community and at all citizens interested in knowing their own history through data and images that Archeology gradually reveals.

In its almost 400 pages, divided into four chapters, the detailed description and analysis of the spectacular archaeological materials recovered in the excavation of this unique site is collected, as well as the context in which they appeared. Nine tombs have provided a concentration of grave goods of an extraordinary abundance and quality, which make Humanejos an inescapable reference in Peninsular and European prehistory.

The authors of the book are Rafael Garrido-Pena, professor of the Department of Prehistory and Archeology of the Autonomous University of Madrid, Raúl Flores Fernández, archaeologist, director of the excavations of the site and Ana Mercedes Herrero-Corral anthropologist, of the Department of Prehistory of the Complutense University of Madrid.