Excavations and Surveys in the Northern Part of the Chalcolithic Settlement of Valencina de la Concepción (Seville, Spain)

The Campaigns of the Years 2020 and 2022

Abstract

The large Chalcolithic settlement of Valencina de la Concepción is located on the north-eastern edge of the Aljarafe plateau, 6 kilometres west of the modern city of Seville in southern Spain. In prehistoric times, it was located on an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that received the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. Magnetometric measurements over an area of 37.5 hectares in the northern part of the Chalcolithic settlement site revealed sections of a concentric system of at least six linear ditched enclosures and two smaller ones as well as an extensive necropolis with around 80 burial monuments. In addition, the geomagnetic survey provided evidence of a large number of settlement pits, pit houses and possible hypogea. At the same time, intensive field surveys in two densely populated areas yielded a wide variety of finds with precise spatial references. This article also presents the results of the 2022 excavation campaign in the northern settlement area of the site. The excavations carried out in the Parcela Municipal of the Cerro de la Cabeza parcel (sections 3, 4, 5A, 5B, and 6) yielded a dense sequence of Early Metal Age settlement pits and at least five pit houses, six workshops, and a well. The typo-chronological approach of the pottery finds and the series of AMS-14C dates reveal the main features of the settlement sequence. The settlement began in the Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic (late 4th millennium BC) and reached its peak in the Middle Chalcolithic (first half of the 3rd millennium BC). According to the 14C data from boreholes and the excavation, the ditched enclosure 3 had already existed in the older phase of the Early Chalcolithic occupation, and, somewhat later, ditch 7 of enclosure 2. According to the model, enclosure 1, and finally, the outer enclosure 5 were constructed after the ditched enclosure 2 in the course of the Middle Chalcolithic. At the transition to the Late Chalcolithic (mid 3rd millennium BC), there was a drastic decline in settlement, during the course of which settlement (second half of the 3rd millennium BC) concentrated on the core settlement area in the present-day urban area of Valencina. In the Early Bronze Age (early 2nd millennium BC) there appears to have been a loose, short-lived re-colonisation of the Cerro de la Cabeza.