Portuguese populations of late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods exhumed from collective burials: An overview

In Portugal, the human remains dated to the Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic periods are relatively common. They are mainly exhumed from collective burial places, frequently containing a high number of fragmentary and mixed bones. Although these funerary monuments have been excavated since the second half of the 19th century, only in the 1990's the anthropological studies of these samples had become systematic. The aim of this paper is to present a synthesis of the actual anthropological knowledge of these communities, focusing on funerary anthropology and demographic data as well as the more relevant morphological and pathological aspects.