Globally, rock art is one of the most widely distributed manifestations of past human activity. Previous research, however, has tended to focus on the art rather than artists. Understanding which members of society participated in creating such art is crucial to interpreting its social implications and that of the sites at which it is found. This article presents the first application of a method—palaeodermatoglyphics—for the estimation of the sex and age of two later prehistoric individuals who left their fingerprints at the Los Machos rockshelter in southern Iberia. The method has the potential to illuminate the complex socio-cultural dimensions of rock art sites worldwide.

The formation of commingled human bone assemblages is a key aspect for better understanding funerary rituals. The megalithic cemetery of Panoría (Spain) provides an excellent opportunity to explore bone assemblage formation thanks to the recent excavation of an undisturbed burial. For this purpose, we have approached the differential skeletal representation found between bone and teeth at the site through radiocarbon (14C) dating and Bayesian modeling. The comparison between the series of 14C dates on bone (n=12) and teeth (n=14) stress three main aspects: (1) the dates of teeth show a long period of funerary use before the deposition of the human bone remains; (2) both kinds of samples appear to be chronologically sequenced; the end of the teeth 14C series matches with the beginning of human bone deposition; and (3) bone remains span a short period, not more than a few decades, which probably represents the last episode of intense mortuary activity. These differences suggest that teeth could be the evidence of skeletal depositions subsequently removed from the tomb. The deposition and removal of bone remains emerge as key aspects in the formation of the bone assemblage.

An excavation carried out at the megalithic necropolis of Panoria in 2015 offered an excellent opportunity for dating a widespread variety of polygonal, rectangular, and trapezoidal-shaped tombs with short passages for which, surprisingly, there were previously no known radiocarbon (14C) measurements available. Based on the anthropological remains, a series of 19 14C dates was obtained and modeled in a Bayesian statistical framework. The results stress a long period of use that began in the Late Neolithic (3525–3195 cal BC), reaching the most intensive ritual activity during the Copper Age and ending in the Early Bronze Age (2125–1980 cal BC). Throughout this period, tombs were built at different times and used at different temporal scales and intensities, ranging from a few decades to centuries.

Inspired by the biographical approach to the study of material culture, a radiocarbon dating programme was undertaken to explore the chronology and temporality of the megalithic monuments in south-eastern Iberia. Instead of one or two dates per tomb, the normal way of approaching this complex issue, we carried out a complete radiocarbon dating series of single tombs based on human remains. We focused our attention on four tholos-type tombs in the cemetery of El Barranquete (Almería, Spain). According to the new radiocarbon series modelled in a Bayesian framework, four main conclusions can be drawn: that the cemetery shows a very long period of funerary activity, which began in the late fourth millennium and ended in the last centuries of the second millennium cal bc; that continuity of ritual practices attained an unexpected importance during the Bronze Age; that interments, which fall into cultural periods that would be unthinkable if only the typological properties of the grave goods were considered, occurred; and that each tomb had a complex and very different biography.

A new technique, based on Optical Methods, has been tested for the evaluation of the lithium bromide (LiBr) concentration, a corrosive substance frequently used in heat pumps. Those solutions have large oxidizing capabilities. This technique avoids the direct contact between the electrodes and the LiBr aqueous solution within a thermodynamic absorption cycle. The viability of this technique in a potential commercial device, resides on its capability to detect working fluid concentrations within a temperature range from 25 °C up to 70 °C, those limiting temperature values correspond to the operating wavelengths of 1.33 μm and 1.55 μm, respectively. Our system determines the correlation among the signal and temperature data, for various concentrations, between 49 and 58 mass percentages. This function of two variables is represented as a surface with the transmittance, concentration and temperature as parameters and wavelength as reference. We discuss the adequate parameters characterization used in this technique.