Important discoveries over the past 15 years in the coastal area between Huelva and Málaga in Spain have illuminated the beginnings of the eighth-century BC Phoenician diaspora into the Western Mediterranean. Here, the authors combine Bayesian modelling of recently published radiocarbon dates with the latest archaeological data to investigate the Phoenician presence in southern Iberia. Their assessment of its significance for the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages in the Western Mediterranean contributes not only to understanding the integration of the Phoenicians into local communities, but also to apprehending the mechanisms of colonisation and pre-colonial situations elsewhere in protohistoric Europe and other world contexts.

Pits are virtually omnipresent in the archaeological record. In Prehistoric Europe, pits occasionally form large concentrations known as ‘pit sites’, where they are the most visible, sometimes the sole, remnants of past human activity. How can we interpret the social roles played by places comprising hundreds or even thousands of pits? A critical point of contention in these debates is how certain we are that all or most pits on a site indeed acted as grain storage pits for most of their use-lives. However, it is not easy to distinguish between pits used for storage and pits destined for other purposes. This paper represents an attempt to circumvent, to an extent, this problem. We will do so by turning our attention away from the problem of accuracy and by focusing on external consistency instead. We gather up-to-date experimental, ethnographic and historical data about the challenges that the storage of grain poses and how pits can help people to overcome them. Then, we discuss their advantages and disadvantages relative to other methods: why would anybody use airtight pits instead of, for instance, weather-proofed raised granaries? Next, we examine the social and economic contexts in which storage pits are an effective solution as opposed to those in which their performance is suboptimal. The conclusions drawn serve as a background against which to evaluate the external consistency of current interpretations concerning three selected case studies in Prehistoric Western Europe.

The cist tombs necropolis at Castillejos de Luna, in Sierra de Gibralmora-Sierra del Hacho (Pizarra, Málaga, Spain) was known from the graphic documentation and the grave goods of two tombs. New studies have documented nine burials. The aim of this article is to present the new virtualisation work that has been carried out in the necropolis, to generate a new three-dimensional (3D) documentation of the currently known records, which are in acceptable visibility conditions. Using tools to document tombs in 3D offers us great advances in data acquisition and editing, with great precision and realism, thanks to the 3D models generated through techniques such as photogrammetry or laser scanning. Thanks to these tools, it is possible to carry out studies on digital twins and use them as informative material for society. The study this paper describes has generated high quality products for dissemination and future analysis. The results shown here are of metric character, with orientation and geographical location of the structures. In addition, in one of the tombs the authors show the combination of photogrammetric techniques with laser scanners to obtain a single high-resolution 3D model; subsequently a retopology process is carried out to achieve a "light" model with a photorealistic appearance that is both easily manipulated on mobile devices for its dissemination and a guarantee that the general public can enjoy this necropolis in a different way. The preliminary results are published in the web repository of 3D models Sketchfab, where the users can see a preview of one of the tombs before and after being optimised with retopology through Blender. The authors provide a socio-historical analysis of Bronze Age necropolises in central Andalusia, within the framework of a debate on the western expansion of the El Argar Culture.

La bahía de Málaga, junto con Huelva, es uno de los lugares del sur de la península ibérica donde se constata la primera presencia fenicia estable en el extremo occidental del Mediterráneo. Este contexto cuenta además con un significativo conjunto de asentamientos de inicios de la Edad del Hierro próximos al litoral, que convierten a este ámbito geográfico en un lugar de interés destacado para conocer el impacto que supuso la presencia de gentes procedentes de otras regiones del Mediterráneo en las comunidades locales de finales de la Edad del Bronce de esta región del sur de la península ibérica, ubicada en el entorno del Estrecho de Gibraltar. En este trabajo se ha considerado que el primer paso necesario para aproximarse al conocimiento de las relaciones establecidas entre ambas comunidades pasa por el estudio de la cronología y temporalidad de los asentamientos de este periodo. Para ello se ha recurrido a una presentación actualizada de los contextos arqueológicos, y, en particular, al empleo del radiocarbono. Con ese objetivo, se ha obtenido un total de 14 nuevas dataciones asociadas a estratigrafías de excavaciones recientes, que se suman a las ya existentes para su análisis conjunto. Los resultados obtenidos permiten plantear para el caso de estudio la existencia de un auténtico “efecto llamada” de la primera presencia fenicia sobre la población autóctona, observándose a su vez evidencias de reestructuraciones internas acontecidas en el poblamiento local como consecuencia de las propias dinámicas de interacción establecidas entre ambas comunidades en los primeros siglos del I milenio a.C.