ARCHIVED - Archaeologists gather in Jumilla to explore the Abrigo del Monje

This site dates from the time when mankind made the transition from hunter gatherer to farmer

15 archaeologists from across Spain, led by Alberto Mingo Álvarez, a professor of prehistory at the UNED, and Emiliano Hernández Carrión, director of the Jerónimo Molina Municipal Museum in Jumilla, are carrying out an excavation campaign in a site known as the Abrigo del Monje in the northerly municipality of Jumilla.

The study began on the 3rd November and concludes this week, focusing on amplifying the amount known about an interesting chapter in the history of mankind as we made the transition from hunter gatherer to farmer, a transition which took place between 8,000 and 4,000 BC, the technical term for this being the transition from the Epipaleolithic to the Neolithic in this area of what is now southern Spain.

The site of the Abrigo del Monje was first discovered and studied in the seventies by Jerónimo Molina, founder of the Municipal Museum in Jumilla which is full of interesting exhibits and is well worth a visit.

40 years later this group of researchers have selected the site for further analysis, particularly interested by the possibility that nearby rocky shelters which contain prehistoric cave paintings in the Levantine and schematic styles could have been created by the people living in this site high on the Jumillano Altiplano.

Jumilla isn´t a name which crops up frequently on the archaeological tourist trail in the Murcia region but it contains some very important sites.

The Iberian settlement of Coimbra de Barranco Ancho high on the hillside above the modern day town was a major Iberian village, the Roman villa of Los Cipreses was an important agricultural villa from the Roman occupation of the region and the Chalcolithic site of El Prado ll contribute to the archaeological heritage of the area, exhibits from all of them in the Archaeological Museum in Plaza de Arriba.