Necrópolis de las Aguilillas Circuit, Campillos (Málaga)

11 10 2022

Necrópolis de las Aguilillas, Campillos

As promised a few weeks ago, here is a route to the Prehistoric Necrópolis de las Aguilillas. It’s sort of in the El Chorro/Ardales area but comes under the municipality of Campillos.

This is another hidden gem that not a lot of people know about. Ardales is more than just the ‘Caminito del Rey’. I will be doing several more new routes here in the months to come, which I am really looking forward to.

From the car park near the Guadalteba reservoir, you make your way into the shaded woods on good gravel roads. The Necrópolis is well signposted. It is a pleasant walk getting there, but you have the option to park there also, if you only want to visit the Necrópolis.

The Necrópolis has 15 signboards (one on the Spanish civil war). They inform you about the civilization that once inhabited the area, and also the 7 burial tombs that are around (which you can go in).

Leaving I could have taken a short cut out to the back where the olive groves are, but went back to the entrance of the Necrópolis, and then made my way to the olive groves. Then turned left up a rocky embankment, that when you reach the summit the views of Ardales and the Conde del Guadalhorce reservoir are stunning. From here the path starts to go downhill where it eventually joins the initial path.

Extra Info on the Necrópolis

Funerary site located at the confluence of the Guadalteba, Guadalhorce and Turón rivers, dating from the transition from the III to the II millennium, composed of seven structures excavated in sandstone, with corridor plants that give access to the main chamber.
Recommended month to visit: May.
In the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula, coexisting for a period of time with megalithism, we find the necropolis of artificial caves. They are constructions excavated in the rocky substrate of the land that generally have plants similar to megalithic tombs, with a corridor and a chamber, as well as delimiting doors of the interior spaces.
Morphologically, the megalithic constructions evoke the mother's womb, to which the deceased return after being deposited in them. A magnificent example is the Necropolis of las Aguilillas, located between the valleys of Guadalteba and Turón, in a miocene sandstone development that rises above the environment about 500 meters above sea level.
There is a circular path to visit the seven tombs of the Necropolis; the circuit, about two kilometres, is of medium-low difficulty.

Funerary site located at the confluence of the Guadalteba, Guadalhorce and Turón rivers, dating from the transition from the III to the II millennium, composed of seven structures excavated in sandstone, with corridor plants that give access to the main chamber.
In the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula, coexisting for a period of time with megalithism, we find the necropolis of artificial caves. They are constructions excavated in the rocky substrate of the land that generally have plants similar to megalithic tombs, with a corridor and a chamber, as well as delimiting doors of the interior spaces.
Morphologically, the megalithic constructions evoke the mother's womb, to which the deceased return after being deposited in them.
In the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula, coexisting for a period of time with megalithism we find the necropolis of artificial caves. These are constructions excavated in the rocky substrate of the land, generally have plants similar to megalithic tombs, with a corridor and a chamber, as well as delimiting doors of the interior spaces.
Morphologically the megalithic constructions take us back to symbols related to the mother's womb, to which the deceased return after being deposited. A magnificent example is the Necropolis of las Aguilillas, framed chronologically between the Final Chalcolithic and the Initial Bronze (2,100 to 1,900 BC), located between the valleys of Guadalteba and Turón, in a promoter of Miocene sandstones that rises about 500 meters above sea level.
We will find a circular path to visit the 7 tombs; the circuit is about 2 kms. and that the difficulty is medium – low. We can park the car in the small parking lot that is just before reaching the Guadalteba reservoir coming from Ardales and from there walk up to the site.
The necropolis of Las Aguilillas joins the ruins of Bobastro and the Cueva de Ardales, two more examples of the troglodytic architecture of the Guadalteba region, which occupies an important place in the troglodytic universe of the province. There are fifty collective burials in which trousseau composed of ceramic vessels, necklaces and personal ornaments, amulets have been found and those that are said to be the first metal tools in the region, such as a good group of copper spearheads. It seems that this necropolis was associated with the town of El Castillón, which is located about five hundred meters across the Guadalteba River.

Actions carried out
Prehistoric necropolis located between the terms of Ardáles and Campillos, which we can date between the third and second millennia BC, built in artificial caves of the Iberian Peninsula. Due to their architectural forms, human remains and archaeological trousseau are the best studied and those that have offered more information about the life and death of the first inhabitants of Guadalteba.
Located between the Guadalteba and Turón Valleys, on a promontory of Miocene sandstones that rises about 500 meters above sea level, is the prehistoric necropolis of the Aguilillas. This enclave was discovered in the late eighties and was studied in 1991. These are seven funerary structures carved into the rock that has preserved the burial chambers and numerous niches around. Some of them preserve the access corridors. During the research work, more than 2000 architectural pieces and about fifty people of both sexes and all ages have been studied, who were buried in these graves between 2100 and 1900 BC, in a period of transit between the Copper age and the Bronze Age. The burials were always in second deposition (only the bones) and with them were deposited trousseau consisting of ceramic tableware, silex knives and personal ornaments (necklaces). A series of metal objects such as palmstick tips and punches have also been discovered, along with female idols in stone.
With this action of the Tourism Revitalization Plan of the Environment of the Guadalhorce-Guadalteba Reservoirs, a cultural and heritage resource that is located in the area of the Reservoirs has been valued.
The actions that have been executed have involved an investment of € 79,112, an investment that ended in July 2009, and that has been divided into two large blocks:
- the conditioning of the area
- the signage of the whole area.
All this has materialized in:
• Signage of access to the Aguilillas.
• Improvement of the two access roads
• Parking: Adaptation, adaptation and signalling of the parking. It was necessary for there to be a meeting point and start of cultural activities and to prevent vehicles from circulating freely in the protected area. It is located next to an old sandstone quarry that has been enabled and signposted for these purposes.
• Seats for the informative introduction and historical interpretation: The beginning of the trail offers a path of slight ascending and descending slopes, running through a pine grove. The first section on a slope places us in a clearing of the forest and at a higher level that allows us to approach the route without great unevenness. It is at this point where the informative introduction is made with the proper construction of semicircular benches, as a small amphitheatre, for the spatial and historical introduction that visitors receive supported with the material that the heritage technician specifies.
• Space situation panel: Located in the area of the informative introduction. The panel describes the territory in which we find ourselves, the geological and geographical interest, specifically, the confluence of the valleys and the Desfiladero de los Gaitanes, the sense of natural communications and the strategic importance of the region for human beings.
• Time situation panel: Located in the area of the informative introduction. The panel informs us about the human occupations of the enclave, focusing on the presence of tribes, settled in this territory since the Neolithic, which were the origin, already during the third millennium before our era, of the foundation of the necropolis of las Aguilillas.
• Panel of prehistoric societies: Located in the area of the informative introduction. It highlights the social context of the human groups that built and used the tombs, that is, their ways of life, their economy, their social and cultural relations. The visitor will also be introduced to the different burial models that occur during this time in Andalusia.
• Tombs Enclosure: The seven prehistoric tombs are grouped into four sectors located in different points of the Cerro de las Aguilillas: the first sector preserves three structures; the second, one; the third, one and, finally, the fourth, two.
Each of the sectors has two panels, one that deals with the architectural aspects and another presents the data obtained during the excavation process on their burials and funerary practices.
The interpretive elements are placed in a way that reinforces knowledge without hindering the vision and general contemplation of the tombs.
In sector I and IV, two panels are also made: in the first dedicated to schematic rock art and the second to the rituals of female burials.
Synthesis of the intervention in the surroundings of the tombs of Cerro de las Aguilillas:
Sector I
1. Architectural aspects of tombs 1, 2 and 3.
2. Data on burials.
3. Schematic art in the surroundings of the Guadalhorce reservoirs.
Sector II
1. Architectural aspects of the tomb 4.
2. Data on burials.
Sector III
1. Architectural aspects of the tomb 5.
2. Data on burials and contextualization.
Sector IV
1. Architectural aspects of tombs 6 and 7.
2. Data on burials.
3. Rituals of burials and anthropological aspects.
In addition, it is necessary to add, as a complementary action, the information on the remains of trenches and battery sites that have been preserved from the Republican front (July 1936-February 1937). During the Civil War, a defensive company was placed on the hill of Las Aguilillas of the advance of the national troops, who had already taken Peñarrubia, harassing, from this population, the dam, the swamp and the town of Ardales, fundamentally. In the same prehistoric necropolis and in its vicinity, the remains of its trenches and some constructions linked to war activities are still detected.