Spaces for life - Argaric Culture

Regarding living spaces, inside the Argaric hut we find various structures dedicated to the storage of food for daily consumption of its inhabitants. These spaces are vital because they not only involve having the necessary resources for subsistence but also they involve mechanisms of control over these resources and the strategies to graduate their use.

In the Argaric settlement of Cerro de la Encina, there have been identified several types of containers for storage, from pits dug into the rock and located near grinding structures  up to storage ceramic vessels, sometimes jars with leading or marking edge and sometimes smaller pots. Normally the various types of stored cereal would need pretreatment for preservation A common strategy was to roast the grain for its preservation; this method is achieved by the inactivation of the enzymes of proteins although sterilization by heat has a clear disadvantage, namely the decrease of nutrients, particularly vitamins, and the reduction of the nutritional quality of the proteins.