The Necropolis of Alapraia: the place of the eternal sleep of a human population. What the human skeletal remains tell us about them…

Abstract

The Alapraia Necropolis (Cascais), dating from the Late Neolithic, includes four artificial caves excavated between the years of 1889 and 1943. Human bone remains were recovered from caves II, III and IV. This collection was deposited in the Museu Condes de Castro Guimarães, in Cascais, without ever having been studied in detail. Recently, more human bone remains from Cave II were found in the Anthropological Museum of the University of Coimbra and in the Museum of Geological Services (Lisbon), which prompt the study of all human bones recovered from said Necropolis. The majority of the human remains were recovered from cave II: at least 49 individuals of both sexes, of whom 22 died before the age of 15. The more relevant morphological data includes the presence of a supernumerary foot bone, calcaneum secundarium (2/8), and an accessory cusp on a left superior lateral incisor (talus cusp), which is the oldest documented case in the Portuguese territory to the date. Among the pathologies, traumatic lesions stand out, namely: a depressed fracture in an adolescent’s skull, signs of fracture in the diaphysis of a 5th left metacarpal, 4th metatarsal, distal foot phalanx and thoracic block vertebrae. All the lesions are remodelled. The research in ancient documentation proved to be extremely useful for reconstituting the course of these human remains between several institutions.