Ground under Spanish street housed at least 450 graves, with most pointing toward Mecca.
Ground under Spanish street housed at least 450 graves, with most pointing toward Mecca.
TAUSTE, Spain — Ana Lacasa
What started out as a run-of-the-mill street repair project in a Spanish town has turned into a major archeological discovery.
Experts have found what is believed to be the oldest collective burial site of Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula, with at least 450 graves dating between the 8th and 12th centuries.
The graves were found under the asphalt of Obispo Conget Avenue in Tauste, a town of about 7,000 inhabitants in the northern Spanish region of Aragon. The dig started in September.
Brought in to coordinate the findings were Rafael Laborda Lorente, director of the excavation team, along with Eva Gimenez, both of Paleoymas, an archeological consulting firm based in Zaragoza, Spain, that works closely with the construction industry.
They explained in an interview with Zenger News that since 2010, the neighborhood association had been asking the authorities to investigate the area. Many times when a house was built there, human remains were unearthed.
Taking advantage of information provided by locals and that significant construction work was to begin in the area, the archeologists decided to investigate.
Most of the graves found were prepared in accordance with Islamic ritual — the face of the deceased points toward Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. As is also common with such burials, the bodies were found with no other artifacts, with the deceased lying naked on the ground, covered only with a shroud, not housed in a coffin.
The main characteristic of such Muslim graves, known as maqbaras, is that they are small, not only because there were sometimes children buried in them, but also because the average height for men of that era was 1.6 meters (5.25 feet) and 1.5 meters (4.92 feet) for women.
“According to the evidence, the burials started in 714 A.D. and possibly lasted until 1121, after the arrival of King Alfonso I of Aragon,” said Lorente.
The discovery is important because it shows Islamic people were in the area before the arrival of Christians and Alfonso I.
The expert also explained the bodies found in the graves are from different generations, spanning a period of four centuries. Regarding the causes of death, Lorente said that the investigation is ongoing, but so far there is no evidence of any violent ones.
The archeological work is ongoing at the site. The bodies are being taken into storage, so they can undergo genetic analysis to learn more about their history.
Information on how the discovery will impact the schedule of the planned road rebuilding at the site was not immediately available.
As reported recently on Zenger News, it is relatively common for construction projects to be held up when archeological finds of some significance are uncovered at a work site.
(Edited by Matthew B Hall and Fern Siegel)
