Enlarge / The site at casas del Turuñuelo, with 1 marking the courtyard. (credit: Iborra Eres, et al.)

Whether it was to appease a deity or honor the dead, ritual animal sacrifice was widespread in the ancient world. But there is a region where it appears that hardly any of these rituals occurred for an extended period of time.

Until now, the archaeological record was almost devoid of any evidence of significant animal sacrifices in the Mediterranean region during the Iron Age. Hardly any written sources describing the practice have been found. While the exact reason that we don’t see any evidence remains unknown, archaeologists have now unearthed more details on one of the only sites sacrifices were known to happen in the Iron Age Mediterranean, a location in western Spain.

The bones of Casas del Turuñuelo now tell us more from beyond the grave than they ever have. “The 52 animals deposited in the courtyard of Casas de Turuñuelo represent a series of episodes of slaughter,” a team of archaeologists said in a study recently published in PLOS ONE.