The Mijas Town Hall continues with the investigation of the Cortijo de Acebedo site and three researchers from the University of Cadiz have traveled to the site to continue examining this enclave on the ground, where a few weeks ago it was found Phoenician funerary urn from the 7th century BC in perfect condition, as announced this Thursday by the mayor, Josele González.
The councilor has highlighted that “the heritage that this historical site preserves is incalculable, which is why from the Mijas Town Hall we are promoting your study through a project that this week has had the visit of a team of researchers.
“Via different scans with a magnetometer and a digital tomograph we want to continue profiling the Acebedo subsurface map to be able to know exactly where we should dig to continue reconstructing the history of our municipality”, explained González, who highlighted how the site “is a benchmark in the province thanks to unique finds”.
In this sense, he referred to “the Phoenician funerary urn from the 7th century BC. found just a few weeks ago and whose micro-excavation has already started, and is throwing up some surprising preliminary results for everyone as it does not contain the remains of the deceased as is usual in this type of funerary container”.
For her part, the councilor for Historical Heritage, Laura Moreno, has detailed that the microexcavation of this phoenician funerary urn unique in the province “has a approximately three days between the work of microexcavation by strata and the collection of information and documentation of all the elements found”.
The mayor added that it is a detailed job “that will help us to know if the short metallic element found outside this urn is related to the metallic elements detected in the CT scan that was made to the ballot box just a few weeks ago at the Xanit clinic in Benalmádena in collaboration with the University of Malaga”.
Thus, this metallic element is the key to deciphering one of the enigmas of this Phoenician urn, the why it does not contain the remains of the deceased. “We assumed that the bones of the deceased were inside the urn, which is usual in this type of urn called the black cross, but bones found so far from an adult they would point to a woman, they were under her”.
“This small metallic element found outside would allow us to associate the bones outside with the inside of the urn”, Moreno has indicated, while noting that “for now it is a unknown to know why this urn is not the main container of the bones”.
Among the hypotheses being considered, the archaeoanthropologist at the Center for Phoenician and Punic Studies responsible for the study of this finding in Acebedo, Victoria Peña, has pointed out that “one of them is that this urn served as a trousseau item or container of some liquid that was part of the ritual, although we are surprised because it is not usual. It is certainly a opportunity to learn about other uses of this container that are not yet documented.