Vale de Barrancas 1. A necrópole neolítica. 91 6 MULTI-ANALYTICAL INVESTIGATION OF RED PIGMENTS RECOVERED FROM HUMAN BURIALS OF VALE DE BARRANCAS 1 HYPOGEA Lucija Soberl Merita Dreshaj Mafalda Costa José Mirão Cristina Barrocas Dias Tiago Nunes António Carlos Valera 6.1 - INTRODUCTION The importance of colour symbolism and use of pigments in ritual and everyday contexts has been reported worldwide and dating as far back as Pleistocene (Hovers et al., 2003; Seva Roman et al., 2015; D’Errico, Backwell, 2016). The basic colour palette that was used comprised of red, black and white, with colour red pertaining to a particular symbolic significance, cross-cutting cultural and chronological boundaries (Hovers et al., 2003; Petru, 2006; Bar-Yosef Mayer et al., 2009). Dominating the prehistoric colour palette was red, most commonly in the form of ochre (red, yellow or brown pigments primarily composed of iron oxides) and in less abundant cases in the form of cinnabar (mercury sulphide). Red is one of the earliest and most widely recognized colours. Early uses of red pigments have been documented in South Africa, between 270,000 and 170,000 years ago (Barham, 2002; d’Errico, 2008; Marean et al., 2007) and reported also from European palaeolithic Neanderthal sites (Zilhão et al., 2010; Roebroeks et al., 2011). While red pigments have been predominantly found in burial contexts and their use accepted as part of symbolic mortuary behaviour, the reported use of ochre and cinnabar was widespread, i.e. cave paintings, decoration and waterproofing of ceramics, painting of wall murals, production of cosmetics, body painting, as a preservative in hide tanning, hafting, metallurgy and used for medicinal purposes (Capel et al. 2006; Cornell and Schwertmann, 2003; Hovers et al. 2003; Erlandson et al. 1999;