The lady of the moutains: the bronze age burial of Montanissel Cave

Sémianire de Nuria Armentano Oller

Abstract: An anthopological analysis of a collective burial with eight primary inhumations from the Montanissell cave in the Catalan Pre-Pyrenees has been carried out. Radiocarbon dating clearly placed the burial in the Bronze Age, around 3200 BC. The composition of the group -two adults (one man, one woman), one young woman and five children of both sexes -seemed to represent the structure of typical nuclear family, but genetic evidences proved these assumptions wrong. It is a unique mass burial (small number of bodies placed in total in a hidden cave, evidence of non-simultaneous burials, close dating, perimortem lesions, and unusual burials…) with many secrets to be solved.