 Hi everybody. First of all, the authors of this communication would like to acknowledge the organizers of the session for accepting this contribution. This communication, whose title is the Gearcheological Evidence of a Sanctuary Disacralization during Roman times in Calescoves, in Menorca, wants to explore the ritual activities carried out in the cave sanctuary of Calescoves, which is in the same environment of one of the contributions of this morning. To do that, we started the DEA Roma project, a gearcheological research with the aim of having a high resolution view of the site formation processes and the archaeological record we discovered in this cave. Finally, in this presentation, we will show the results of the project and we will discuss the archaeological implications of our study. The cave sanctuary of Calescoves is located in the southern coast of Menorca, in a bay that contains a great diversity of archaeological sites, like a huge proto-storical necropolis of artificial caves, a ritual well carved in the rock, a defensive coastal settlement, or an anchorage point with signs of occupation from the 4th century BC to the 7th century of our era. From these sites, the cave sanctuary of Cobadels Jurat stands out. It is a natural cavity and tropically modified to confer a temple shape with three telas. At a certain point, the roof of the cave collapses, sealing the archaeological deposits. This cave shows occupation from the 3rd century BC to the 2nd century AD. There are 30 epigraphs in the entrance of the cave and all of them share the same formula. All of them say, here we come the 21st April in the Calendas Mayas. This day is a special day in the Roman calendar because it is the date in which Rome was founded by Romulus and the goddess Rome was born. In this sense, this cave and descriptions seems to have a special meaning from the archaeological point of view. That day, the 21st April at the sunrise, it was identified a special phenomenon in which the light illuminates only the descriptions, only the area in which only 30 descriptions that mention the 21st April are located. Cobadels Jurat's rituals must be related with the fisting of the mythical origins of Rome known as Pariglia. That ritual meaning explains the richness of the material culture we identified in the excavation process, like Hellenistic megalithic bowls, Italian black glazeware or a huge amount of barnet-boned remains. These materials were founded in a complex sedimentary sequence of finely stratified, silty layers rich in organic content, as you can see in this picture. To what we know, the rituals of the aroma involved the cremation of leaves and aromatic herbs. In order to purify the livestock and the animals, it has a ritual sense of fertility and prosperity of the Roman state represented in the immortal city of Rome as a goddess. With this background, we established an hypothesis. The ritual behavior of the aroma was the responsible of the genesis of this very complex sequence. So, if we carried out a very complex archaeological study, we should be able to talk about the ritual behavior. So, with that background, we established the De Aroma project focused on the archaeological sediments with a wide range of analytics from the earth sciences. In this presentation, we will show the results of one of the main analyses we have carried out, which is archaeological soil microbiology, which is the study of the sediments through optical microscope. That provides a higher resolution view of the micro-satigraphy and also the site formation processes. So, now, I would like to discuss the results and what were the processes involved on the formation of this sequence. If we start with the bottom of the sequence, there is a sedimentary matrix composed mainly of barnet bones, as you can see in this picture here, weather cut, calenite, big charcoal fragments, herbivorescruments and barnet leaves, which you can see anatomically preserved in section. This fits very well with the ritual behavior of the aroma is the burning of leaves and there are animals in these environments, which are represented with the excrement of herbivorescruments. However, the rest of the sequence is radically different. There are several brown layers, which show a sedimentary matrix mainly composed of herbivorescruments. These are very highly bioturbated deposits with a great content in phytoliths, non-anatomically connected. These deposits are thermally altered, so there was combustion on the genesis of these deposits. There is a progressive transition from black to brown, indicating gradual thermal alternation and there's a high concentration of fecal spherulites, which is displayed in this picture here. Fecal spherulites are calcium carbonate spherulites, very, very tiny, considering that a thousand microns is a millimeter and this is only five microns. And there are nanocrystals radically organized in its structure. These fecal spherulites are generated in the intestinal tract of ruminants, so goat, sheep and cow, and it's a stabbling indicator. So for us, these brown layers represent deposits composed mainly of co-properates of herbivore, ruminants, and plant residues, so forage and beds. Also, inside of one of these layers, there's a stratigraphic intercalation, which is an input of granitic sand, exogenous to the island of Menorca, by the way, to produce a working surface in which we found metal slacks, collected with lead. There are pedofiters related with lead recycling, as lead carbonate and lead oxide. Also, there are some signs of a response sediment with vegetation growth. So for us, this stratigraphic intercalation is associated with an episode of metal recycling, the brown layers are intercalated with very huge white layers that are white spread in the cave. These layers are mainly ashes, because we identify rhombic crystals of calcite. There is a great content in Seleucia's phytoliths, as you can see in this picture here, and there are partially burned organic remains as this blackberry seed. Also, there are burned spherulites. So for us, the genesis of these deposits is the burning of a vegetation floor of a stable. It represents maintenance activities. They burn the stable in order to clean it. Finally, there's a discontinuity in the sequence. Here, you can see an ocean surface, and up to that, there's a layer whose sedimentary composition is very similar to the other brown deposits, indicating stabling activities. There's fresh organic matter, partially unified, and bioturbation. In fact, you can identify anatomical remains of modern soil fauna. So this layer is modern, it's not ancient. And finally, there's a roof collapse, a huge roof collapse of the cave, possibly by an earthquake. So, going back to our starting hypothesis, what we thought at the beginning when we started the project is that the ritual was the responsible of the genesis of the sedimentary deposits. And that would imply sacrifice of animals, commensality, and combustion events. And that was real, because there were the third descriptions talking about that, and there were the archaeological materials that are related with the feast and the cult and the ritual. But the geoarchaeological evidence is radically different. They show the use of the cave as a livestock-establing space. That implies the sacralization of a sanctuary, seasonal occupation, maintenance activities, and waste management practices, and combustion events. So there's a minimal impact of the ritual on the site formation processes of this cave. That makes us question, to what extent did the ritual activities developing the cave sanctuaries leave sedimentary evidence? We need a good knowledge of the sequence to understand the ritual behavior, and this case study shows how material culture, which is the evidence of the ritual behavior, and the stratigraphic sequence may not correspond to each other. They represent very different things in the use of this cave. The sequence we identified in our cave is not a unicorn in the archaeology. There's a kind of settlement that Natalia Ewez knows very well, which is the fumier, and it represents the seasonal occupation and animal penning and stabling maintenance activities in caves, and is widespread in the Mediterranean and even in other areas as the Nisoba in Siberia. So that was the conclusion of this study. Thank you very much.