Since 2014, the team of archaeologists from the Sencelles-Costitx Archaeological Route has been carrying out maintenance and outreach work here.

In 2007, the archaeologist Javier Aramburu-Zabala carried out the excavation of talaiot 2 (Aramburu-Zabala 2011). Prior to this, the site had already been included in the publication La Prehistòria de Sencelles (Aramburu-Zabala and Sastre 2001).

Since 2014, the Sencelles-Costitx Archaeological Route team has been carrying out maintenance, restoration and outreach work on the archaeological heritage here.

In 2020, the Restoration and Improvement Project began, with 6 intervention campaigns carried out so far.

Among other improvements to the surroundings, modern elements have been removed (e.g. pieces attached to the talaiots) and two information panels have been installed.

Regarding major architectural restoration work, the complete consolidation of Talaiot 2 and its attached enclosures has been carried out, along with the partial restoration of the façade of Talaiot 1 and the access corridor to its interior.

Restoration work is still ongoing.

The 2007 excavations made it possible to establish 2 major phases of use of the talaiot

Standing at 180 metres above sea level, it visually dominates much of the Pla de Mallorca and the Serra de Tramuntana. Also known as Talaies de Can Quiam, it has been documented since the early 20th century.

Since 2015, the Sencelles-Costitx Archaeological Route has excavated and restored the settlement’s triple naveta, with six excavation campaigns and eight of site preparation. The aim was to check whether it followed the usual pattern of the double or triple navetas excavated so far: one domestic room, another almost empty, and later reoccupations.

East Room: the domestic space

The first room to be excavated (2018) confirmed a residential use: a hearth-grill, domestic pottery, bone tools, animal remains and small auxiliary structures. It was a functional house where people cooked, worked and lived.

Central Room: the great surprise

The 2021 excavation revealed a huge deposit of animal and ceramic remains: more than 20,000 bones, the remains of 56 sheep and goats, 17 pigs and 10 cattle, crushed pots, an upper platform and a transverse wall sealing the apse area.

The zooarchaeological study points to a communal butchery: the processing, preservation and storage of large quantities of meat for the whole community. Techniques such as smoking, fat-curing, the use of honey and the use of marrow were practised there. After the roof collapsed, the space was turned into a pen.

Dating indicates that both rooms were built before 1300 BCE and abandoned around 1100 BCE.

West Room: the realm of fire

Excavated between 2024 and 2025, it is later than the other two. It has four different combustion structures (hearths, cobbled areas, an oven), which points to specialised heat-related activities: cooking, food processing or thermal processes. It may have continued the butchery work after the collapse of the central room.

A communal architecture

Naveta 1 shows a cooperative social model: the east room as a dwelling, the central one as a communal butchery and storeroom, and the west one as a space for specialised combustion activities. This rules out the idea that navetas were only dwellings and reinforces the image of a community without major inequalities, with an economy based on collaboration and redistribution. The monumentality of the navetas does not stem from any religious, symbolic or funerary function, but from the need to create shared spaces for living and working.

Es Turassot is today a key site of the Balearic Bronze Age. Naveta 1 reveals a society capable of organising large-scale collective works, managing communal resources and combining housing, production and storage within a monumental architecture in the service of everyday life.

Since 2015, the Sencelles-Costitx Archaeological Route has continued to research and restore the settlement.

In 1895, during farming work, Joan Vallespir accidentally discovered the famous bronze bull’s heads, now on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. The find caused a great stir and prompted the intervention of the Societat Arqueològica Lul·liana, which sent Bartomeu Ferrà to draw up the sanctuary’s plans and document the bull’s heads, along with other ceramic and metal objects also found there.

Ferrà’s Plan

In 1995, to mark the centenary of the discovery, Costitx town council acquired the sanctuary’s land and a re-excavation campaign was carried out, directed by Guillem Rosselló Bordoy. This intervention included a highly controversial restoration: the stone blocks used to assemble the columns still visible today may have had a different arrangement and even a different function from that of column drums. At the very least, the plan drawn up by Ferrà at the time, together with his description of it, raise doubts on this point.

Even so, the archaeological materials recovered by Rosselló Bordoy, which notably include two Roman-period bronze figurines associated with the household gods (lares), allow us to suggest that the sanctuary had a long life. Certain types of indigenous pottery suggest that the sanctuary would have been built around the 5th century BCE and would still have been in use during the early stages of Romanisation.

In 2010, conservation work was carried out that included clearing vegetation, restoring the line of the missing walls using metal sheets, levelling the ground with gravel, and renewing the information panels.

Since 2015, Son Corró has been part of the Sencelles–Costitx Archaeological Route, promoted by the town councils of both municipalities with the aim of encouraging research, outreach and the enhancement of local archaeological heritage.

In 2022, the Route team launched the Son Corró Sanctuary Restoration and Conservation Project, with the support and funding of the Consell Insular and Costitx town council. During the 4 campaigns carried out to date, these have been the main actions: cleaning and maintenance; excavation and consolidation of the apse’s outer wall and remains of walls from other structures associated with the sanctuary; restoration and consolidation of the façade (in progress); and improved drainage to prevent erosion and water build-up inside the sanctuary.

Restoration and conservation work is still ongoing; the next campaign is planned for autumn 2026, with the aim of completing the consolidation of the building’s façade.

The Cova del Camp del Bisbe is an exceptional site that combines cremation and ritual deposition practices of great symbolic value, a complex collective necropolis, and evidence of a well-established agro-pastoral economy with Mediterranean contacts.

A place that reveals ritual, funerary and social practices of great value from communities that were not isolated, but maintained contacts with their neighbours and with populations beyond Mallorca.