Cañaveral de León 2 stela RTI files [dataset]

Iberian late prehistoric stelae stand out as a significant manifestation of European prehistoric art. For well over a hundred years, the context of use of the c. 300 Iberian stelae known to this date have been intensely discussed. This debate, however, was inherently flawed and limited in its scope, as almost all the available examples were found by chance, and no good-quality empirical evidence was available to understand their context. In this paper, we present the first conclusive and incontrovertible scientific evidence demonstrating that Iberian late prehistoric stelae were used both as grave markers and landscape landmarks associated with pathways. This evidence stems from fieldwork undertaken in June 2022 and September 2023 at the site of Las Capellanías (Cañaveral de León, Huelva) in south-west Spain, including field walking, geophysics and excavation. The ground-breaking discoveries made at this remarkable site within barely a year reveal the contextual association of three different stelae to as many graves within the context of a large burial complex. Specifically, in this paper we study Stela #2 through a broad combination of methods ranging from geoarchaeology to archaeoastronomy, as well as multiple image-processing techniques. This multidisciplinary approach provides a wealth of data that reveal multiple strings of evidence concerning the context of the stela, its manufacture, its graphic design. This provides a much-needed and long-awaited empirical base to understand where, when and how Iberian prehistoric stelae were used.