Today, 13 July, Amics del Museu de Menorca revealed the news from the 2022 field season, the fourth undertaken in the northern part of the settlement. A
visiting day is scheduled for 20 July 7:30 p.m. to explain to the public the preliminary results of the archaeological dig.
Since the 1990s, the Amics del Museu de Menorca association has been undertaking research, presentation and outreach work concerning the prehistory of Menorca and the Torre d’en Galmés site. Excavation is currently jointly headed by the archaeologists Borja Corral and Carlos de Salort. Restoration tasks are handled by the restorers and conservators Francesc Isbert and Cecília Ligero, while the project involves some twenty students from various Spanish universities, and volunteers from Menorca.
The 2022 season is divided into two phases:
three weeks of excavation at the site between 4 and 15 July; and laboratory work up until 29 August at the association's premises in Maó. The excavation project focuses on a group of structures located in the northern part of the settlement, between two of the three talayots, which would undoubtedly correspond to the oldest stage of occupancy of the site.
Human remains
This year occupied levels were excavated in the central courtyard and some rooms of Structure 1. This was apparently a domestic space with different rooms covered over with a clay and mud roof. The distrbution of the rooms is slightly different from what has been documented previously in the other houses excavated at the settlement.
As in previous seasons, this year human remains were documented in two of the rooms, and are still being exhumed. One of the individuals is a an indeterminate adult, in other words the skeleton does not allow the text to be identified, given the lack of indicative features. Radiocarbon dating of the
human remains found last year would place the death of the skeleton around the 3rd century BC. The human traces that have now been found would be expected to be from the same period.
Ceramic materials, fauna and other findings have been documented in the central space, which would be connected with the last phase of occupancy or initial abandonment of the house during the final phase of the island's prehistory.
This project has been made possible thanks to funding from the Consell Insular de Menorca, Alaior Local Authority, and the members of the Amics del Museu de Menorca association. It receives scientific support from Boston University, the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage of Belgium, the Higher School of Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Artefacts of Catalonia, and the topography company TANIT SL, among others.