A high-resolution chronology for La Cueva de Los Cabezazos (Tegueste, Tenerife, Canary Islands) and its implications for aboriginal settlement dynamics

The chronology and settlement dynamics of aboriginal occupation in Tenerife remain poorly resolved compared with those of other Canary Islands, partly due to the scarcity of stratigraphically controlled radiocarbon sequences. This paper presents a high-resolution chronological reassessment of Cueva de Los Cabezazos, a key habitation site in the Barranco Agua de Dios, one of the most archaeologically significant areas for understanding Guanche settlement in north-eastern Tenerife. The study combines 24 new AMS radiocarbon dates obtained from short-lived domestic faunal remains with Bayesian chronological modelling, Kernel Density Estimation (KDE), and island-wide comparison through 100-year temporal bins. The resulting model places the onset of occupation between the late 6th and early 7th centuries CE and documents a long and continuity of the stratigraphic sequence of use extending for approximately nine centuries. The model is statistically robust across different outlier scenarios and provides the most extensively dated stratigraphic sequence currently available for a Prehispanic site in Tenerife. The results also indicate significant changes in site function through time. Earlier levels, concentrated in the inner sector of the cave, are associated with domestic activities, whereas later deposits in the entrance sector suggest a shift towards livestock penning, supported by the accumulation of faunal remains and the presence of fumier-like deposits. At an island-wide scale, Cueva de Los Cabezazos contributes to defining the Barranco Agua de Dios as one of the stable settlement foci established by the 6th–7th centuries CE. Overall, these results refine current models of aboriginal occupation in Tenerife and provide a robust chronological framework for future multi-proxy analyses of settlement organisation, subsistence strategies, and human–environment interaction.