SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 30. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The staff of the Benahoarita Archaeological Museum (MAB), belonging to the Cabildo de La Palma, and volcanology professionals collaborate to try to answer the questions posed by the funerary site of the La Cucaracha necropolis, located in the Las Tabaibas Mountain, in Village of Mazo.
It is one of the most interesting and strangest sites not only in the archeology of La Palma, but also in that of the Canary Islands. This singularity is due to the fact that, apart from being a place of cremation used for hundreds of years, there are a series of lava blocks with embedded human remains.
There have been various theories to explain this circumstance, such as the site being affected by a nearby volcanic eruption; the lava blocks were moved from another place and this amalgamation of bones and lava has been caused during the cremation process. The excavations, directed by the paleoanthropologist Nuria Álvarez Rodríguez, have so far not been able to reliably resolve these questions.
The multidisciplinary team is made up of Stavros Meletlidis (IGN); Fabio Speranza (INGV-Rome); Massimo Pompilio, Alessio DiRoberto and Paola del Carlo (INGV-Pisa); Professor Guido Giordano (Rome III University); student Andrea Magli, who is doing her doctoral thesis on Holocene eruptions; Felipe Jorge Pais Pais (Doctor in Archaeology) and Nuria Álvarez Rodríguez (archaeologist).
The work of this team seeks to take advantage of the presence in La Palma of specialists in volcanology to carry out joint studies in other Benahoarite sites that, in one way or another, have been affected by volcanoes in the last 2,000 years. Among the most striking examples are the burial of the north and south fronts of Roque de Los Guerra by the eruption of Los Valentines, in Villa de Mazo; the effects on the petroglyphs of Roque Teneguía due to the eruption of San Antonio, in Fuencaliente; the specific date of the Tacande-Montaña Quemada volcano that covered Benahoarite settlements in the area of Las Cuevas, El Paso, etc.
Likewise, for palm archeology it will be of great interest to be able to identify all those lava flows that occurred during the indigenous period for 1,500 years in order to learn how the ancient palm growers faced and survived these natural cataclysms.
The Minister of Culture and Historical Heritage of the Cabildo de La Palma, Jovita Monterrey, highlighted the importance of carrying out this type of scientific research in which the collaboration between different specialists can provide solutions to issues that, otherwise, will always remain in the realm of unconfirmed hypotheses. “This is a very ambitious and very interesting Research Project for which we will request the collaboration of other institutions to achieve the objectives we have set for ourselves,” explained the Minister.
