Neolithic

Among the 6.000 and 3.000 years B.C. the communities began to be sedentary and to establish their towns next to farm lands and graze for the cattle. The agriculture and the cattle were complemented with the activities of chasing, fishing and harvesting. In that period they also began to use ceramic vessels, besides the receptacles of wood and stone.

Some of these towns were established in small elevations or terraces near rivers or dry ravines: El Capitán; Luchena, Xiquena, El Chorrillo Alto, El Chorrillo Bajo, La Parrilla and La Salud. The houses were an oval or circular hut with a base of stone, adobe walls and roof made with beams of wood and branches. They were very small and they were used to sleep, for storing or for taking refuge when it was bad weather.

In Lorca the only Neolithic settings well documented in cave, are localized in Barranco de la Hoz and Valdeinfierno. This scarcity of sites could have been due to the prolonged survival of the ways of living related to hunting and harvesting.

The burials were carried out in caves, natural shelters or megaliths. The more ancient tombs well documented in the valley of the Guadalentín are the megalithic necropolis. It deals with constructions with big stones placed in a circular way. They put in the centre a sepulchral chamber that was covered with a roofing formed possibly with sticks and branches. Most of the time, they were used to as multiple burials.

In Lorca, we find some of the more significant megaliths of the Murcia region in Murviedro in el Cerro del Colmenarico, Peñas de Béjar and El Cerro Negro de Jofré in Zarcilla de Ramos. These megaliths are dispersed along the valleys of the river Corneros, in which we find Cabezo Colorao or Xiquena, Turrilla in Cerro Negro and Guadalentín in Peñas de Béjar.