A TOTAL OF 115 WITH SKELETAL REMAINS AND CERAMICS, AMONG OTHERS

The archaeological remains of the Zonzamas site return to Lanzarote after 20 years

The Island Council will now be in charge of conserving these materials, after spending two decades in the custody of the University of La Laguna (Tenerife)

May 12 2017 (15:22 WEST)
The archaeological remains of the Zonzamas site return to Lanzarote after 20 years
The archaeological remains of the Zonzamas site return to Lanzarote after 20 years

Lanzarote has recovered the archaeological remains found two decades ago in a heritage intervention at the Zonzamas site, which have been guarded during all this time by the University of La Laguna (Tenerife). The Island Council will now be responsible for conserving them, something they had been requesting "since last year", and which they say has been achieved thanks to the intervention of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sports of the Canary Islands, headed by Mariate Lorenzo, and specifically the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage, coordinated by Miguel Ángel Clavijo.

The president of the Island Council, Pedro San Ginés, and the Councilor for Heritage, Carmen Rosa Márquez, received on Thursday morning a total of 115 boxes with archaeological material (skeletal remains and ceramics, among others), which were found in 1996 and 1997 by the team of Dimas Martín Socas, Antonio Tejera Gaspar, María Dolores Cámulich Massieu and Pedro González Quintero.

San Ginés thanked "the mediation and collaboration of the regional councilor and the general director so that these remains could return after twenty years to their place of origin and that they can be incorporated for their protection into the inventory and heritage fund of Zonzamas that the Cabildo of Lanzarote keeps, as well as in the near future they can be exhibited in the Island Archaeological Museum".

 

Enabling a space to investigate, classify and conserve the pieces


In this sense, the Government of the Canary Islands and the Cabildo of Lanzarote have announced that they will soon enable "a suitable space for archaeologists to carry out research, classification and conservation of the pieces found in these new campaigns that are executed, until the two museums are in service, the Island Archaeological Museum and the Zonzamas Site Museum".

The president of the Island Council also recalled that the work carried out twenty years ago by the two Canarian universities in this archaeological complex is being "completed with new research, discoveries and field work" for several years, commissioned by the Cabildo to various specialized archeology entities and companies. These works aim to "resume excavations, continue investigating and highlight one of the most important Canarian settlements in the archipelago, for its archaeological, scientific and historical value about our origins and greater projection and growth of the Canary Islands", according to researchers also support and affirm, San Ginés stressed.

This collaboration and intermediation so that the University of La Laguna would cede the custody of the investigations carried out in the 90s is another example, according to the president of the Corporation, "of the commitment assumed by the Ministry led by Mariate Lorenzo, to value and recover the historical heritage of the Canary Islands, and specifically of the island of Lanzarote and La Graciosa". For her part, the councilor has reiterated "her firm commitment and will as a councilor, and that of the Government, to continue contributing in the General Budgets of the Autonomous Community specific items to boost the Site Museum project and to continue working, in collaboration with the Cabildo, in new archaeological research campaigns".

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