Archaeology documents the critical roles that ritual played in early regional political organizations. These intermediate-scale societies represent a scalar jump in size and complexity from hunter-forager bands and farming villages. Ritual spaces and monuments materialized regional organizations, and their physical durability makes them ideal for archaeological study. Impressive monumental architecture in intermediate societies, however, has few ethnographic or historical analogs. We argue that these social...

Our dear colleague and friend Víctor Hurtado Pérez (Solana de los Barros, Badajoz, 1950) passed away on Saturday September 7th 2024. Víctor was a retired Senior Lecturer at the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology of the University of Sevilla, and a founding member of the ATLAS research group. For over three decades, he was very active in the research of southern Iberian Late Prehistory. He...

Megaliths represent the earliest form of monumental stone architecture. The earliest megalithic chambers in Europe appeared in France in the fifth millennium BCE. Menga is the oldest of the great dolmens in Iberia (approximately 3800 to 3600 BCE). Menga’s capstone #5 weighing 150 tons is the largest stone ever moved in Iberia as part of the megalithic phenomenon and one of the largest in Europe....

Raquel Montero Artús, member of the ATLAS research group, have presented the conference “A Social Perspective on Cinnabar Use and Mercury Exposure at the Copper Age Megasite of Valencina, Spain ”  during  the WESIPS Conference, 2024 (Warfare, Environment, Social Inequality, and Pro-Sociability Biennial) in Sevilla, Spain  

Archaeology, the magazine of the Archaeological Institute of America (USA), re-launches its website with a new slideshow of our recent discoveries at the Valencina Copper Age mega-site. https://archaeology.org/issues/may-june-2024/#spain-copper-age-priestesses

El Grupo de Investigación ATLAS, de la Universidad de Sevilla, ha desarrollado diversos estudios de la Prehistoria Reciente con la tecnología LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) y materiales del Instituto Geográfico Nacional. El programa de televisión y de divulgación TESIS presentó algunos avances en su nueva edición. https://www.canalsur.es/television/programas/tesis/noticia/2055078.html

Francisco Sánchez D. and José Ruiz F., members of the ATLAS research group, have presented the conference “Five Millennia of large Stones for the dead ” , and scientific poster “Space, time, territory and landscape in the iberian megasites of 3º millennium”, during the Landscape Archaeology Conference, in Madrid, Spain.

Los investigadores Miguel Galindo y Leonardo García Sanjuán se encuentran desarrollando un nuevo estudio de las posibles condiciones acústicas en  yacimientos prehistóricos.  El estudio, en los Dólmenes de Valencina, pretende investigar la función de su comportamiento temporal y frecuencial de los megalitos de La Pastora y Matarrubilla.

Durante los meses de mayo y junio 2024, el investigador Bernardo Cornejo Maltz, de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, obtuvo una beca de investigación de la Asociación de Universidades  Iberoamericanas Públicas (AUIP), con la colaboración entre el departamento de Antropología Social y el Grupo de investigación ATLAS de la Universidad de Sevilla (US). El investigador Cornejo Maltz ha colaborado en las tareas de investigación...

By a team from the universities of Seville and Göteborg, directed by profs. Mark A. Hunt Ortiz and Johan Ling, and within the framework of the Maritime Encounters project , from April 22 to May 17, 2024, a selective Archaeo-Metallurgical survey has been carried out in the NE of the province of Córdoba, NW of the province of Jaén and S of the province of...

El próximo día 28 de mayo de 2024, a las 19:00, el profesor Rick Chacon, de la Universidad de Winthrop (EEUU) presentará la conferencia "Los Achuar de la Amazonia y los Dani de Papúa Nueva Guinea. Dos ejemplos de Adquisición de Estatus y Acción Colectiva en sociedades igualitarias" Sala Carriazo de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia de la Universidad de Sevilla

WESIPS 2024 (Warfare, Environment, Social Inequality, and Pro-Sociability Biennial Conference) will be held in Seville from June 4 to 7, 2024. You can consult the program here

Today, mercury is a matter of concern for health and environmental authorities across western countries, and legislation has been passed and programs have been implemented for its total elimination from human activity. But this was not always the case: mercury and its compounds have been highly appreciated and used since remote times all over the world with very diverse purposes ranging from decorative, medicinal, metallurgical...

El número 10 (julio 2023) del "Boletín Archivo Epigráfico", ha publicado el trabajo: "Nuevas inscripciones funerarias romanas de Gades", Cádiz,  donde funge como coautor Jacobo Vázquez Páez del grupo ATLAS (HUM694). Se trata de los primeros resultados del repertorio de 43 nuevos epígrafes hallados en las excavaciones, específicamente en la zona de necrópolis púnica y romana.

Organizamos el seminario impartido por el investigador mexicano David Charles Wright Carr de la Universidad de Guanajuato e investigador de la Cátedra UNESCO Legislación, Sociedad y Patrimonio de México. Objetivos: Llevar a cabo discusiones sobre los enfoques teóricos actuales para el análisis y la interpretación de los manuscritos pictóricos de la Mesoamérica prehispánica y novohispana. Ofrecer a los estudiantes/profesores nuevos paradigmas en este campo desde un especialista....

The Gerda Henkel Foundation has funded with 24,750 euros the project entitled Eggxotic and vital. The role of ostrich eggs in the definition of religious identity in the Phoenician-Punic Iberian Peninsula: reinterpreting the Villaricos necropolis (Almeria, Spain). It will be led by Miriam Luciañez-Triviño (Distinguished Researcher and member of the Atlas Research Group, HUM-694) and Violeta Moreno Megías (Assistant Professor and member of the Research...