Abstract
Iron Age archaeology in Europe and the Mediterranean often faces significant difficulties to establish precise chronological frameworks by means of radiocarbon dating due to the so-called Hallstatt Plateau. This problem worsens in those archaeological sites excavated decades ago with a lack of stratigraphic control of the objects recovered. The archaeological studies carried out in Iron Age funerary contexts from Mallorca (Balearic Islands) are greatly affected by these two distorting factors. Therefore, it has been difficult to establish an accurate chronology for the origin and abandonment of certain individualization practices, such as the use of wooden coffins in collective necropolises. The goal of this paper is to overcome these limitations and to define the most reliable chronological framework for this funerary phenomenon by applying a multi-proxy approach. Thus, the chronological information provided by the detailed typological study of the material culture associated with the wooden coffins was connected to the results obtained from an extensive series of new radiocarbon dating of the wooden coffins. In addition, a wiggle-matching analysis (different 14C dates for the same wooden object corresponding to individual tree-rings) was also conducted in some wooden coffins in order to enhance the precision of the radiocarbon dates. Accordingly, the direct and indirect chronological information show that the use of wooden coffins in Mallorca started around 800–750 cal BC and was abandoned at c. 350–300 cal BC.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the directors and staff of the Museums in Mallorca and Madrid for providing access to the materials and for facilitating our work: Museu de Mallorca, Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Museu de Lluc and Museu de Pollença. We also thank Alejandra Galmés-Alba (ArqueoUIB) for providing Fig. 2 and to the two anonymous referees that reviewed the manuscript.
Funding
The work of Llorenç Picornell-Gelabert has been financed by a Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación fellowship (IJCI-2015_24550) from the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Economy and Competitiveness.
This research has been funded by the project “HAR2015-67211-P: Archipiélagos: Paisajes, comunidades prehistóricas insulares y estrategias de conectividad en el Mediterráneo Occidental. El caso de las Islas Baleares durante la Prehistoria” (Spanish Ministry of Industry, Economy and Competitiveness).
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Calvo Trias, M., Van Strydonck, M., Picornell-Gelabert, L. et al. Dying in the Hallstatt Plateau: the case of wooden coffins from Iron Age necropolises in Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Western Mediterranean) and the difficulties in defining their chronology. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 12, 247 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01206-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01206-y