The Evoluciona de Tarragona Ràdio program enters the Xaragalls cave in the Conca de Barberà for the first time

In this Evoluciona, from Tarragona Ràdio and IPHES-CERCA, we visit the Cova dels Xaragalls in situ, a small open karst system, located in the municipality of Vimbodí-Poblet, in the Conca de Barberà.

It had a sepulchral use for more than 4,000 years. The archaeological excavation work at the site has already uncovered in recent campaigns more than 7,000 human, animal and ornamental remains, from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. We know that this cavity was used as a burial cave, it was a cemetery where the bodies of the deceased were deposited. At the time, after conditioning access and cleaning the interior surface of sediments due to furtive activity, the team managed to document intact archaeological levels very rich in Holocene archaeological remains. Just this week, on Sunday, the new excavation campaign concludes at this place in the Conca de Barberà, which we visited to do the program inside the cave.

The research project has also integrated the systematic analysis of the material from the previous furtive activity and which is deposited in different museums in the territory. Very relevant is the trepanned skull lent by the Museu Terra de l'Espluga de Francolí in 2020 and of which a deep paleopathological and taphonomic analysis is being carried out.

It is an important archaeological site from the Holocene that was inspected in the 70s but little has been published about it, until IPHES-CERCA researchers did it. We will visit the cave and the team of 'IPHES-CERCA researchers, and we will explain to you what is being done there with Josep Vallverdú and Alfredo Suesta, in addition to talking to the URV History students, and the URV and IPHES Master's students, who participate in the campaign.