News

Archaeological work carried out at the Coves del Fem (Ulldemolins, Priorat)—located within the Serra de Montsant Natural Park—between 30 May and 28 June 2026, has yielded new evidence of exceptional interest for understanding the prehistory of the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. The campaign was conducted by a team of researchers from the Department of Prehistory at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Milà i Fontanals Institution for Research in the Humanities of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC-IMF), with the support of the Ulldemolins Town Council and the Serra de Montsant Natural Park, as part of the four-year archaeology projects of the Catalan Ministry for Culture.

Neanderthal populations in southern Europe collected shellfish throughout the year, with a marked preference for the colder months, according to a new international study led by researchers from ICTA-UAB, the IsoTOPIK Lab at the University of Burgos (UBU), and the Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria at the University of Cantabria (UC).

The hunting of large whales goes back much further in time than previously thought. New research from ICTA-UAB and the Department of Prehistory of the UAB reveals that Indigenous communities in southern Brazil were hunting large cetaceans 5,000 years ago, around a thousand years before the earliest documented evidence from Arctic and North Pacific societies.

The Department of Prehistory is taking part in the 2025 European Researchers’ Night.

The Faculty of Philosophy and Arts at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) is organizing a series of academic and cultural activities to raise awareness and foster debate on sexism in the field of archaeology.

On Friday 6 June the UAB will play host to the closing event of the project Investiga.edu, an educational proposal which for four years made it possible to bring science and research into archaeology, palaeontology and geology closer to primary and secondary schools located in rural and mountaineous areas, particularly in the Pyrenees and pre-Pyrenees regions. The event will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Periodicals Room of the Humanities Library.

National Geographic magazine has dedicated the main article of its May issue to the research and discoveries made by the research team of the Social Archaeology of the Mediterranean (ASOME) group at the UAB at the sites of La Almoloya and La Bastida, which are representative of the El Argar society that inhabited the southeastern Iberian Peninsula 4,000 years ago. The publication has also devoted its editorial and cover to the topic, featuring an illustration of the Princess of La Almoloya.