Dolmen de la Velilla
DatedEst. 4000–3000 BCE
Photo Pusazul · CC BY-SA 3.0 esSource file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
Overview
The Dolmen de la Velilla is a collective burial monument on a small promontory 3 km from Osorno la Mayor, on the road towards Abia de las Torres, in the province of Palencia, Spain. Radiocarbon dating places its burials in the third millennium BCE.
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Where it sits in time
The site's dated range, placed against world reference points.
The scale is logarithmic: each step to the left is about ten times older than the last.
Article
Dolmen de la Velilla
The monument is a collective tomb with a circular burial chamber formed of ten large blocks of limestone.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen de la VelillaCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen de la VelillaCC BY-SA 4.0
The monument is a collective tomb with a circular burial chamber formed of ten large blocks of limestone. This is surrounded by a tumulus of ten smaller stones extending ten metres around the central area of the chamber. The floor is made of crushed limestone.
FindsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen de la VelillaCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen de la VelillaCC BY-SA 4.0
The remains of more than a hundred individuals have been found inside, some of the bones coloured with ochre paint. The grave goods comprise several tools, jewellery and figures carved from goat bone (caprine bone). Radiocarbon dating places the burials in the third millennium BCE.
ConservationSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen de la VelillaCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen de la VelillaCC BY-SA 4.0
The site is a bien de interés cultural.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Dolmens of Andalusia, Extremadura and Galicia
Spain has a great many megalithic tombs, and the Atlas's Spanish dolmens run from Andalusia in the south to Galicia in the north-west. The finest are at Antequera in Andalusia, where the Dolmen of Menga, dated to about 3750 to 3650 BCE, is among the largest ancient megalithic structures in Europe. It is 27.5 metres long, 6 metres wide and 3.5 metres high, built with thirty-two megaliths, the largest weighing about 180 tonnes. After the chamber was finished it was covered with soil and built up into the hill seen today; when it was opened in the nineteenth century archaeologists found the skeletons of several hundred people. The Dolmen of Viera stands 70 metres away, and the tholos of El Romeral lies about 4 kilometres off; the three were inscribed as the Antequera Dolmens Site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in 2016.
In the south-west, the Dolmen de Soto at Trigueros in Huelva province is a Neolithic tomb estimated to date between 3000 and 2500 BCE, one of about 200 Neolithic burial sites in the province. It was found in 1922 when its owner, Armando de Soto Morillas, wanted to build a house; the German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier found eight bodies in a fetal position with artefacts, and its engraved and painted uprights have been studied more recently.
In Galicia and Portugal a dolmen is an anta, and in Catalan-speaking areas dolmens have folk names such as cova (cave), caixa (crate or coffin), taula (table) and arca (chest). These names are tradition: they record what people made of the monuments, not what they were built for.
When visiting Menga, look at the great capstones from inside the corridor, and at the way the mound was built up over the chamber.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Dolmen of Menga, Wikipedia: Dolmen of Viera, Wikipedia: Antequera Dolmens Site, Wikipedia: Dolmen de Soto, Wikipedia: Dolmen · CC BY-SA 4.0
See it in 3D
An interpretive reconstruction of the monument, standing on the real ground at its exact point, under the sun for that place and season. Drag to look around it.
The reconstruction is ours, not a survey: it shows what a monument of this type looks like, at the size the record gives for this one.
Photographs
4 photographs, each with its author and licence
More photographs
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 4000–3000 BCEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for dolmens in Spain; this site has not been dated itself. Most dolmens date from the Late Neolithic period (4000-3000 BCE); the Dolmen of Menga in Andalusia dates to about 3750-3650 BCE.Source for this date
Where it stands
Spain
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 42°24′59″ N, 4°23′28″ WFor a GPS or map app: 42.41633, -4.39119
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
Menhir El Cabezudo2800–1800 BCE
Dolmen de La Cabaña4000–3000 BCE
Dolmen von Las Arnillas4000–3000 BCEPhoto: Ángel M. Felicísimo from Mérida, España · CC BY-SA 2.0
- DolmenDolmen de la Nava Negra4000–3000 BCE
Dolmen von El Moreco4000–3000 BCEPhoto: jacinta lluch valero from madrid * barcelona...., (España-Spain) · CC BY-SA 2.0
Dolmen de Cubillejo de Lara4000–3000 BCE
Dolmen El Pendón4000–3000 BCE
Dolmen de Busnela4000–3000 BCE
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Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q5812512wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
Image files
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Dolmen de la Velilla" (Spanish), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; authors are listed in the page history. Reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · Edit history and authors
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen de la VelillaCC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikidata Q5812512CC0