The bearded vulture, an unusual ‘archaeologist’

by the University of Granada
September 18, 2025

What hides in a bearded vulture nest abandoned hundreds of years ago? This was the question posed by Sergio Couto of the University of Granada’s Cultural Archaeology Laboratory (MEMOLab). He began searching for forgotten bearded vulture nests in southern Spain—where the species disappeared between 70 and 130 years ago, depending on the region—with the hunch that he was about to stumble upon an unusual natural history museum.

Couto delved into the records of naturalists who visited the mountains of Andalusia in the 18th and 19th centuries and left behind “very detailed stories, which they illustrated with black and white photographs,” he explains. He consulted elderly residents in the region, “in their 70s and 80s, who remembered because they had witness the species or because a shepherd had told them something.” He also spoke with researchers currently working on species that are specialists of rocky habitats. Piecing together the puzzle has taken him and the MEMOLab-UGR team years of research that continues to this day.

He discovered that this bone-eating vulture’s dwellings, built hundreds of years ago, held unexpected treasures: an intact 700-year-old shoe (from the late 13th century); a fragment of tanned and painted leather from the same period that resembles a mask; a remnant of 18th-century basketry; a crossbow bolt; ropes, a horse harness, slings…among thousands of pieces of ungulate bones and eggshells.

Keep reading (in Spanish): https://canal.ugr.es/noticia/quebrantahuesos-arqueologo-insolito/

Read the Ecology paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.70191