¿Huesos en la basura o depósito ritualizado? Los perros descuartizados de La Huelga (Dueñas, Palencia)

Abstract

Since the last decade of the twentieth century, and thanks to open area excavations that had taken place in pit sites, afforded us some structured depositions containing articulated faunal remains, dogs among them. This paper studies one of these animal deposits which is dated by means of the most recent pottery of the pit filling as Protocogotas I –Middle Bronze Age in the Iberian plateau– as well as radiocarbon dating 3350 ± 30 bp. The results of the above said study revealed that those dogs underwent an exhaustive disarticulation and butchering processes as well as appearing accompanied by some pieces of cattle bones. This paper presents a study of the recovered artifacts and faunal remains and the interpretation not only of this singular context but also discuss ethnographical and historical referents of activities related to different types of sacrifices in which dogs played the main role. It was also taken into consideration other symbolic practices performed during the Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age in the Iberian plateau in which dogs are involved. Deposits containing articulated faunal remains are rare but not exceptional and require excavation and registers techniques similar to those used for human burials, in order to perform a later rigorous study, unavoidable for getting forward in further research about Bronze Age societies in which animals’ death, and death in general, played a relevant ideological role.