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The Hunter-Gatherer Societies gallery at
the Prehistory Museum of the Valencia
Provincial Council
The newly inaugurated Hunter-Gatherer Societies gallery at the
Prehistory Museum of the Valencia Provincial Council presents
material evidence of the first humans to inhabit the Valencian
lands. The exhibit bears the fruit of the intensive work carried
out by the Prehistory Research Service and the Museum since
it was founded in 1927, encompassing excavations, interdisciplinary research projects, conservation and dissemination.
This work is reflected in the enormous scientific and heritage
value of the Museum’s collections, of anthropological remains,
stone and bone tools, artistic creations, flora and fauna, each
of which gives direct and indirect testimony of early human
societies and the world in which they lived.
Research into Valencian prehistory has changed substantially
over the last decades, as has the discourse of the Museum’s
collection, which has evolved to frame recent archaeological findings in new perspectives of scientific inquiry. The
Hunter-Gatherer Societies gallery is a new area for reflection,
learning, culture and enjoyment, where visitors are encouraged
to engage with the exhibits through a communicative design
combining audio-visual installations, tactile models and scientific illustrations.
The Hunter-Gatherer Societies gallery opens into a space devoted to the beginnings of Valencian archaeology, in a period
when the drive of the recently created Prehistory Research
Service and its Museum was crucial to constructing an understanding of Prehistoric life in the Valencian region and the
wider Mediterranean area of the Iberian Peninsula.

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1. Personal diary of L. Pericot, 1928 (La Bastida
de les Alcusses)
2. Elephant tusk (Cova Negra)
3. Biface (Cova del Bolomor)
4. Parietal bone (Cova del Bolomor)

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The space devoted to The origins of humanity takes us back
seven million years to the beginnings of hominisation in Africa,
when the most significant developments in the evolution of
hominids took place: physical transformations, the development
of technological skills and social changes. These developments
lead to questions about what it is that makes us human, where
we come from and what we have inherited from Homo sapiens.
The third space is an introduction to the Palaeolithic in the
Valencian region that brings together exhibits dating from
350,000 years ago to the end of the Pleistocene approximately
12,000 years ago.

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The space is articulated around two exhibitions. The first is
a diachronic itinerary through changing landscapes, which
reconstructs the successive ecosystems recorded across the
region. It presents a sizeable part of the Museum’s Palaeontology
collection and human fossils, including significant Neanderthal
remains from the Cova del Bolomor in Tavernes de la Valldigna,
the Cova Negra in Xàtiva and the Cova Foradada in Oliva.
The second exhibition in this space takes us through the major
Palaeolithic sites in the Valencian region, the origin of the Museum’s collections and the main focus of its research: the Cova
del Bolomor in Tavernes de la Valldigna, the Cova Negra in Xàtiva,
the Abrigo de la Quebrada in Chelva, the Cueva de les Malladetes
in Barx, the Cova del Parpalló in Gandia and the Cova del Volcán
del Faro in Cullera. The exhibition examines cross-disciplinary
aspects of human groups, such as socialisation and group size,

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5. Necklace (Cova del Parpalló)
6. Needle (Cova del Parpalló)
7. Barbed and tanged arrowhead (Cova de les
Malladetes)

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issues of gender and the transmission of knowledge, as well
as elements of early human life such as the appropriation of
land, the use and control of fire, habitat, technology, hunting
and gathering, beliefs and artistic manifestations.
The central part of the gallery marks a meeting point and
provides a space for reflection between the world of the Neanderthals and the world of Homo sapiens, in which visitors
are encouraged to engage with some of the major questions
in contemporary scientific research in this field: Why did the
Neanderthals disappear? Are we so unalike?
The final space in the gallery presents a series of artistic creations that place us before the complexity that characterises
the symbolic world of hunter-gatherer societies in the Upper
Palaeolithic. The varied manifestations testify to the diversity
of beliefs among different groups and the personal ornamentation through which these were reflected. The most important
exhibits in this space are the painted and engraved plaquettes
from the Cova del Parpalló in Gandia, which has yielded one of
the preeminent collections of Prehistoric portable art in Europe.
The Prehistory Museum of Valencia invites you to visit the new
gallery and enjoy an adventure into humanity’s past, to examine the archaeological collections and reflect on the profound
nature of time and our enduring proximity to early human life.

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8. Homo sapiens skull (Cova del Parpalló)
9. Plaquette with deer engraving (Cova del
Parpalló)
10. Perforated staff (Cova del Volcán del Faro)

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MUSEU DE PREHISTÒRIA DE VALÈNCIA

c/ Corona, 36 - 46003 València
Info: (+34) 963 883 565 - Arranged visits: (+34) 963 883 579
Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm
Admission free on weekends and public holidays

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