Pyrenean Bronze


The Pyrenean Bronze is a regional European Bronze Age culture, known from archaeological facies, that spread through the Spanish provinces of Girona, Barcelona, Lleida and the eastern half of Huesca; also it spread through the French departments of the Pyrenees-Orientales and Aude.
From the Bell Beaker culture, two regional styles appeared in Catalonia, one being the Pyrenean and the other the Salomó. These two styles coexisted at the same time in the provinces of Barcelona and the south of Lleida. From 1650 A.C. the Pyrenean ceramic style gave way to carinated cups, to pots with smooth or indented cords, as well as to vessels with button appendages on the handle.
Few settlements are known: Lo Lladre, Collet de Brics, Institut A. Pous, Roques del Sarró, Cedre.
Advanced bronze metallurgy was developed: flat axes, needles, rivet daggers, arrowheads, as well as a diadem and two spiral bracelets found in the Montanissell cave. Possibly many of the techniques used had a North Italian origin in the Polada culture.
Several funeral formats were used:
  • pits such as Mas d’en Boixos, Bosc del Quer, Can Bonastre.
  • reuse of silos, such as Camp Cinzano.
  • reuse of Chalcolithic hypogea: Carrer Paris.
  • hypogean pits, for collective use: Mas d’en Boixos, Bosc del Quer, Can Bonastre.
  • cists like Camp Cinzano, or Vall de Miarnau.
  • caves with collective burials:, Cova M del Cingle Blanc, Cova de la Pesseta, Galls Carboners,, Montanissell cave.
  • paradolmens or cave-dolmens such in Girona, Masia, Tafania,, Cova Verda, etc.
  • dolmens with stone mounds: Creu de la Llosa, Serrat d'en Jacques, Santes Masses,, Castelltallat, Serra de Clarena, Maioles, etc.
With regard to the megalithic traditions of the Pyrenean Bronze Age, the menhir and cromlech of Mas Baleta also must be included.

Genetic profile

Some individuals who lived in the Pyrenean Bronze area were genetically tested. From the collective funerary cave known as Grotte Basse de la Vigne Perdue, near Narbonne, an individual was assigned to Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b-Z195. Also from another collective funerary cave, the Cova del Gegant, a male from the middle of the second millennium was assigned to Y-chromosome R1b-P310. Another individual from the Can Roqueta II necropolis in Sabadell, was from the subclade R1b-P312. A male buried in the collective inhumation hypogeum found in Miquel Vives street, also was assigned to R1b-P310.