As for the first element of this name, see . As for baratza, we can say that in current speech it means orchard. But in the past it must also have meant "cemetery", as in the Latinised ortu-santu ("holy orchard", "holy field") from the region of Gernika. Thus, in Atáun they call Jentilbaratza "orchard of gentiles" the place where they are supposed to be buried; in Arano they call a prehistoric monument -crómlech- with this name, of which there are many examples in that region; in Oiartzun they call it Mairubaratza "orchard of Mairu" and it is said that the INTXIXU (male lamias, Maide of Zuberoa or sorcerers of Atáun) are buried in such monuments.
My informant from Sara said that, in her childhood, when she passed by the Mairubaratz of Ibañeta (Zugarramurdi) it was customary to pray for those buried there. The Mairubaratza are therefore a kind of cromlechs or arrespil "stone fences" (Iron Age monuments) that exist in large numbers in some areas of our country, although they are called by different names in different places. Thus, in Arano they are called Jentilbaratza; in Sara and Zugarramurdi, Mairuilarri "Mairu's burial place"; Maidekorralia, in Alzay. The area of such arrespils extends from Ariège to Vizcaya, along the Pyrenees. They have not, however, been found in large areas of Vasconia (a large part of Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya and Navarre and the whole of Álava); this is perhaps due to the insufficiency of the surveys - which I think is more likely - to the fact that dolmens from earlier times continued to be used for the same purpose in this area. In Guipúzcoa, for example, we have not seen them outside a narrow strip of its territory, on its eastern side; in Navarre, only in the mountains; in Vizcaya, in the western part.
Don Telesforo de Aranzadi and D. Pedro Manuel de Soraluze made some excavations in the cromlechs of Oyarzun in 1914; but they did not find any material in them that would help us to know the meaning or use and age of these constructions. I myself excavated one of the Olegui (Ezcurra) cromlechs in 1936, but I did not find anything to clarify the fate of those stone fences. Later - 1957 and 1959 - I carried out a fairly detailed exploration of the Mendittipi and Meatse cromlechs, located in the territory of Bidarray and Itxasu, on behalf of the Directión de l'Architecture (Fouilles et Antiquités) of the French Ministry of National Education. In the centre of one of them I found a chest or cist made of flat stones: it contained earth and lumps of coal. In another arrespil or cromlech, whose diameter measures six metres and whose circumference is made up of twenty stiff slabs, I found inside the fence two scrapers, a perforator and an arrowhead (of the kind with fins and a stalk), all made of flint, plus a striker or edge with clear signs of use. In the centre of several Meatse and Iuskadi cromlechs, a cist half a metre long and four metres wide, probably a deposit of ashes, is marked by stones just above the ground. This revealed the prehistoric character of these monuments. That is why we were able to say in a work published in 1962 under the title En el Pirineo Vasco. Prospecciones y excavaciones prehistóricas, in "Homenaje a D. Telesforo de Aranzadi" (MUNIBE magazine, 3-4. San Sebastián, 1962), the following: "we do not think it is risky to consider these rustic constructions as cremation tombs typical of the Iron Age. Their very shape and dimensions, the objects we have found in them and the stone urn... assimilate them to the cromlechs of the Ger plain that General Pothier had excavated, reaching the conclusion that these circles were burials in the Halstattic tradition". These cremation graves, erected along ancient tracks in the vicinity of old sheepfolds, bear witness to Iron Age pastoral life. The practice of cremation had spread throughout Vasconia. The graves at Salbatierrabide (Vitoria), the urns at El Bortal (Carranza), the one at Urio (Sara) and the pits with the remains of cremated bodies found in the burial mound of the dolmen at Aizkomendi (Eguílaz) are proof of this. .