Abstract:

The uses of lime in building tasks in the Late Prehistory along the Mediterranean area, constitutes one of the most relevant questions in the research process in the last decades. The important difficulties to determine with reliability the presence of anthropic lime among the building materials obtained from the archeological places is been commented in different studies. To identify this pyrotechnological product in the prehistoric constructions, distinguishing it from natural lime, is really important due to the social and environmental implications that its uses and production involve. The application of an ample analysis protocol to several samples coming from different human settlements of the VI to II millennium cal BC in the East of the Iberian peninsula, allow us to suggest the use of lime from early stages of the III millennium cal BC, and with more certainty, from II millennium cal BC.