The Cova del Randero de Pedreguer (Alicante, 8,558 inhabitants) was used about 6,000 years ago, during the Neolithic, as the headquarters of the area’s butcher shop. For centuries, shepherds settled there who took care of the livestock, manipulated it and traded the meat, as revealed by the remains of ceramic material, flint utensils and fauna bones found in one of its rooms. But the discovery in 2018 of a human jaw, from a child between 6 or 7 years old, focused the gaze of the specialists. It showed signs that it had been processed in the same way as any piece of the sheep and goats that served as regular food. And, in addition, it had human teeth marks. In 2021, the ulna of a newborn emerged that showed the same signs of what appears to be a cannibalism funerary ritual in which no signs of violence appear and which, according to researchers, could constitute a unique case in Spain.
“The consumption of human flesh of children, without violence and in a domestic context, it is unique at the state level,” says Rafael Martínez, head of Archeology at the Valencian Institute of Conservation, Restoration and Research (IVCR+i) of the Generalitat Valenciana, who has collaborated in the excavation, paid for by the Alicante Provincial Council for fourteen years and co-directed by the prehistory curator Jorge Soler and the archaeologist Consuelo Roca de Togores. “There are signs of cannibalism from the same period in areas of Andalusia or in the Cova de Santa Maira, in Castell de Castells,” a town near Pedreguer, in the north of the province of Alicante, adds Soler. “But given that they were found in a space of coexistence”, with no signs of sacrifices or blows, “we could assess that perhaps we are facing a gesture of love.” There is also no evidence of “disease” or “malnutrition,” continues Roca de Togores, because the animal remains are abundant. “Everything indicates that it is a funeral ritual,” he points out.
Of the two children subjected to the cannibalistic ritual, the oldest “was 6 or 7 years old and was already considered an adult, because at that age he could go out to herd,” says Soler. In addition to the jaw, a phalanx belonging to the same individual has appeared. Of the baby, “who died shortly after birth,” continues Roca de Togores, “we have found a rib, an ulna and a tibia.” The human teeth were identified by a team specialized in animal bite marks. “The marks are made on fresh bone,” says Martínez, that is, shortly after the death of the two little ones. “They are characteristic stigmata, very clear evidence of human manipulation” with a “very significant presence in the Cova del Randero.” On the child’s jaw, the traces of defleshing were evident to the naked eye. “The flint marks on dry bone”, those of deceased, at least, several days in advance, “are very different from those of fresh bone with collagen”, emphasizes the researcher from the Provincial Council.
The site, dating back to around the fifth millennium BC, consists of an exterior room and several interior rooms. “The outside one was intended for livestock,” explains Soler, “and the inside ones were the rooms of the shepherds” who traded the meat through exchanges with other communities. “It is not used all year round,” says the archaeologist, but those responsible for the livestock, generally “small families,” lived “in nearby villages and grazed and guarded the livestock.” In the interior rooms of the Randero, “the ceramic vessel, which had several uses, such as cooking or giving light to the room,” flint tools and even post marks that could be used to demarcate spaces, have been discovered.
One of the areas investigated was “the garbage dump,” where all the remains accumulate. “Ceramic material has appeared,” indicates the archaeologist, with an entire vessel as the main historical sample. “Also tools and 3,600 remains of domestic and wild fauna,” bones “marked with flint to disarticulate and deflesh.” First the bones were separated, then the muscles were cut to extract the pieces of meat and, finally, the bones were fractured to extract the marrow. “In the garbage dump there are also remains of at least eight individuals of various ages and both genders,” says Roca de Togores. In the rest of the galleries of the cave there are the remains of more than twenty human corpses. In none of them do there appear traces of manipulation, “which indicates that the cannibalism ritual was not for everyone, not everyone was buried the same,” says the archaeologist.
“We cannot judge the events of the past with the eyes of the present,” warns Soler, “perhaps this is a good point to start thinking about the causes that led to rituals of this type.” The cave will probably be limited to archaeological study, without opening to the general public, because “it is very difficult to museumize,” according to Soler at the press conference presenting the investigations in which the president of the Provincial Council, Toni Pérez, the deputy for Culture, Juan de Dios Navarro, and the mayor of Pedreguer, Sergi Ferrús.
