Home | Category: Early Settlements and Signs of Civilization in Europe / Otzi and Copper Age Europe / Bronze Age Europe
NEOLITHIC IBERIA
A model of the Copper Age town of Los Millares with its walls; It was located 17 kilometers north of Almería, Spain and was occupied roughly from c. 3000 BC to 2000 BC and was probably home to about 1000 people
Around 10,000 B.C., at the beginning of the Mesolithic period, Ice Ages glaciers started to recede significantly and Europe warmed up considerably and sea levels to rise. Around Magdalenian peoples of Iberia and elsewhere in Europe modified their technology and culture. The main techno-cultural advance was microlithization — a process of reducing of size of stone and bone tools, refining them and making them more portable. Also at this the cave sanctuaries appear to have been abandoned and art becomes rarer and mostly done on portable objects, such as pebbles or tools. [Source: Wikipedia]
The first Mesolithic culture was the Azilian culture. A local evolution of Magdalenian, it is known for producing microlaminar microliths and hunting smaller forest animals as climate change caused the the large herd animals to migrate further north. The best-known Azilian site in the Iberian peninsula is Zatoya (Navarre). The Asturian culture was a successor to the Azilian. It was based more to the west. Their most distinctive tool was a pick-axe used for picking limpets off rocks.
La Almagra style pottery has been found at many sites. It could could be quite variegated. The oldest megalith is dolmen tombs dated to c. 4800 B.C.. It may be the oldest of its kind in the world. Around 5700 B.C. the Cardium pottery Neolithic culture (also known as Mediterranean Neolithic) arrived to Eastern Iberia.
Introduction of Agriculture to Spain
In the 6th millennium BC, Andalusia the first agriculturalists arrived in Spain. It is known exactly where they came from but some have suggested they may have arrived by sea from Africa. The presence of domestic animals has been deemed unlikely, as only pig and rabbit remains have been found and these may have been animals. Early Iberians consumed large amounts of olives but not clear whether the trees were cultivated or the olives were harvested from wild tree. [Source: Wikipedia]
Rafael M Martínez Sánchez wrote: Around 8,500 years ago, members of farming communities crossed the Aegean Sea, bringing techniques similar to those used in Anatolia to Greece and the Balkans. Five centuries later, some then made the crossing to Italy. Agriculture first appeared on the Iberian Peninsula around 7,600 years ago. This occurred alongside its appearance on the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, as well as its gradual expansion through the river valleys of continental Europe.
It led to a marked increase in population sizes, and a huge demographic shift took place when local hunter gatherers were assimilated, bringing about broad genetic and cultural variation. These communities were the last of the Mesolithic era. [Source: Rafael M Martínez Sánchez, Prehistoria, Universidad de Córdoba, The Conversation, January 30, 2024]
On the Iberian peninsula, the practices that Neolithic populations brought with them were similar to those that had appeared a few centuries earlier in Italy. The decoration of pottery is particularly significant, as it is a strong indicator of cultural affinities. This generally consisted of impressed motifs, known as Cardium pottery, which often made use of seashells such as cockles.
This type of pottery has been found in coastal areas throughout the Mediterranean, so it is believed that Neolithic people travelled on simple boats that sailed close to the shore. In a relatively short time, these populations came to occupy the entire Iberian peninsula, where they underwent rapid cultural evolution.
Copper Age Spain and the Bell Beaker People
extent of the Bell Beaker culture
During the Chalcolithic or Copper Age the earliest phase of metallurgy began and copper, silver and gold all started to be worked. The most recognized start date for the beginning of Chalcolithic in Iberia is c. 3200 B.C.. According to radiocarbon dating, the Pre-Bell Beaker Chalcolithic began on the Northern Iberian Plateau started at the same time. It was characterized by the appearance and trade metal goods, often decorative or ritual objects, and items from far away such as amber from the Baltic and ivory and ostrich-egg products from Northern Africa. One famous artifact is the Ivory Lady from Tholos de Montelirio.
The Bell Beaker people first around 2500 B.C.. They are named after the distinctive inverted-bell beaker drinking vessel they used. Gordon Childe described their presence as an intrusion of "missionaries" that expanded from Iberia along the Atlantic coast, spreading knowledge of Mediterranean copper metallurgy. Based on ther artifacts, Stephen Shennan described them as a mobile cultural elite imposing themselves on indigenous substrate populations.
In the early phase of the culture, Bell Beaker artefacts were not distributed across a contiguous area as is usually the case with archaeological cultures but were found in insular concentrations scattered across Europe. Their presence is not associated with a characteristic type of architecture or of burial customs. However, the Bell Beaker culture does appear to coalesce into a coherent archaeological culture in its later phase.
Megaliths in Spain
The area, in the countryside near the city of Antequera is renowned for natural rock formations like La Peña de los Enamorados, (the Rock of the Lovers) as well megalithic monuments, which may be there because of the natural formations. The most famous is the Dolmen of Menga — one of the largest and oldest megalithic structures in Europe, dating to between 3800 B.C. and 3600 B.C. The passage in Menga is not aligned to a solstice sunrise or sunset, as might be expected. Instead it is oriented toward La Peña about 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) to the northeast. The other two megaliths in the region were built later and seem to point elsewhere. La Peña de los Enamorados is named after a legend that says two star-crossed lovers once killed themselves by jumping off it. The mountain is also famous because it looks like the profile of the head of a sleeping giant, especially at times of low light such as sunrise and sunset. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, May 15, 2023]
The alignment suggests La Peña was an important focus for local prehistoric people and solves a mystery of where Menga was pointing: to the location of both the rock art and the newly found tomb at La Peña, while the tomb at La Peña (See Below) itself pointed to the solstice sunrise, Leonardo García Sanjuán, an archaeologist at the University of Seville, told Live Science. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, May 15, 2023]
According to Archaeology magazine: One of the largest and oldest megalithic complexes in Europe was identified across 1,500 acres in southern Spain. The site of La Torre — La Janera, in Huelva Province, consists of more than 500 standing stones, called menhirs, that were erected as much as 7,000 years ago. Other megalithic structures in the complex include dolmens, cists, burial mounds, and stone enclosures. Over a period of 3,000 years, the complex was likely used for important ceremonial and religious activities, as well as for social gatherings. [Source: Archaeology magazine, November 2022]
See Separate Article: MEGALITHS OF EUROPE europe.factsanddetails.com
Highest-Ranking Person in Copper-Age Spain Was a Woman, Not a Man as Previously Said,
Jennifer Nalewicki wrote in Live Science: Since its discovery in 2008, the skeleton of a high-ranking individual buried inside a tomb in the Iberian Peninsula between 3,200 and 2,200 years ago was thought to be the remains of a man. However, a new analysis reveals that this person was actually a woman. Archaeologists in Spain dubbed the woman the "Ivory Lady" based on the bounty of grave goods found alongside her skeleton, including an ivory tusk surrounding her skull, flint, an ostrich eggshell, amber and a rock crystal dagger, according to a study published July 6, 2023 in the journal Scientific Reports. "The first anthropological report determined that the individual was most likely male based on an analysis of the pelvis," study co-author Leonardo García Sanjuán, a professor of prehistory at the University of Seville in Spain, told Live Science. [Source: Jennifer Nalewicki, Live Science, July 7, 2023]"
Because the skeleton's pelvic region wasn't well preserved, this new group of researchers used a different method to analyze the remains: They conducted an amelogenin peptide analysis of the skeleton's tooth enamel to see if it contained the AMELX gene, which is located on the X chromosome (one of the two sex chromosomes found in humans), according to a statement. They detected AMELX after testing two of the teeth. "This analysis told us precisely that the skeleton was female," García Sanjuán said.
While not much is known about who this woman was, the archaeologists think that at one time, she was the "highest-ranked person" in this particular society, García Sanjuán said. "During this time period, we were starting to see new forms of leadership in Western European societies," he said. "She was a leader who existed before kings and queens, and her status wasn't inherited, meaning that she was a leader based on her personal achievements, skills and personality."
Her tomb is a rare example of a single-occupancy burial in this region, which provides further evidence of her high status during the Iberian Copper Age (2900 B.C. to 2650 B.C.). "The burial is special because it contains only one individual and isn't a [mass grave] with commingled bones," he said. "When we compared the grave goods with our database [of more than 2,000 grave sites in the area], we can clearly see that this woman stood head and shoulders above other individuals in terms of wealth and social status."
For instance, a nearby lavish Copper Age tomb holds the remains of at least 15 women; this grave may have been constructed to hold individuals who claimed descent from the Ivory Lady, the researchers said. Other burials in southern Spain, particularly of infants interred without grave goods, further reveals that during the Copper Age birthright didn't determine social status. The location of her tomb also provides insight into the ancient society that once resided there, according to the study. "In the last 15 years we've come to learn that this site was important and was the largest civilization site in Iberia," he said. "We think that this was a central gathering place that connected people from afar. It makes full sense that the Ivory Lady would be buried here."
This isn't the first time archaeologists have assigned a skeleton the wrong biological sex. "There have been other instances in which buried individuals were classified as male or female based on the assumptions of certain grave goods being given to men and women," he said. "This is a poor scientific practice and a cautionary tale."
'Powerful, Maybe Even Frightening' Woman Ruled Bronze Age Spain
Benjamin Leonard wrote in Archaeology Magazine: A rich burial unearthed in southeast Spain suggests that women may have held greater power in the Bronze Age El Argar culture than previously understood. In a large building at the palace site of La Almoloya, a team of archaeologists discovered the remains of a 35- to 40-year-old man and a 25- to 30-year-old woman who had been buried in a large ceramic jar in the mid-seventeenth century B.C. [Source: Benjamin Leonard, Archaeology Magazine, September/October 2021]
The room where the couple was buried had a raised platform and benches on all four sides that could seat more than 50 people. It appears to have served as an important gathering space. “The fact that the woman and man were buried in the most outstanding building and ample hall we know of suggests that they were both linked to the political sphere,” says archaeologist Roberto Risch of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Compared with the man, the woman was buried with a much more lavish array of gold and silver objects, including an awl, earplugs with spiral loops, and a silver diadem atop her head. The diadem is nearly identical to silver crowns found in the graves of four other women excavated in the nineteenth century at the site of El Argar, from which the culture derives its name. These burials, Risch explains, also contained more high-value objects than contemporaneous male burials. “This makes a good argument that women played a special role in the economic and political organization of this society,” says Risch.
'Lost' Tartessos People of Spain
The Tartessos, were a rich, mysterious people who formed an ancient civilization that settled in the southern Iberian Peninsula in the 9th century B.C. during the Iron Age and disappeared around 500 B.C. Archaeologists believed that their culture was a mixture of local Iberian traits and influences brought by Phoenicians in the eastern Mediterranean. The The Tartessos had their own writing system called Tartessian, that had roughly 97 inscriptions in a Tartessian language. Some historians and scholars, including the Greek philosopher Aristotle, once linked them to the mythical lost city of Atlantis. However this idea "has been widely dismissed in the scientific community," according to the BBC. Tartessos is also considered "lost" because of how few remnants of it survive.
In the historical records, Tartessos appears as a semi-mythical harbor city on the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula in modern Andalusia, Spain, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. It appears in sources from Greece and the Near East starting in the first millennium B.C.. Herodotus described it as beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The Tartessians were rich in metals. In the 4th century B.C. the historian Ephorus describes "a very prosperous market called Tartessos, with much tin carried by river, as well as gold and copper from Celtic lands". Trade in tin was very lucrative in the Bronze Age, since it is an essential component of bronze and is comparatively rare. Herodotus refers to a king of Tartessos, Arganthonios, presumably named for his wealth in silver. Herodotus also says that Arganthonios welcomed the first Greeks to reach Iberia, which was a ship carrying the Phocaeans from Asia Minor. [Source: Wikipedia]
Jennifer Nalewicki wrote in Live Science:Although the Tartessos didn't leave much of an archeological record, archaeologists do know that they were skilled at goldsmithing; for instance, gold pieces similar to the reliefs' earrings have been unearthed at two Tartessian sites, Cancho Roano and La Mata. These locations were torched to the ground in a similar manner to the newly discovered pit site, but why and how these conflagrations occurred remains a mystery, according to an April 21, 2023 Vice article. . [Source: Jennifer Nalewicki, Live Science, April 26, 2023]
In April 2023, archaeologists in Spain announced they have unearthed five life-size busts of human figures that could be the first-known human depictions of the Tartessos, The carved stone faces, which archaeologists date to the fifth century B.C., were found hidden inside a sealed pit in an adobe temple at Casas del Turuñuelo, an ancient Tartessian site in southern Spain. The pieces were scattered amongst animal bones, mostly from horses, that likely came from a mass sacrifice, according to a statement. "The unusual thing about the new finding is that the representations correspond to human faces," Erika López, a spokesperson for the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), said in the statement.
Archaeologists from the CSIC called this discovery "a profound paradigm shift in the interpretation of [Tartessos]," since this ancient civilization, which existed from about the eighth to the fourth centuries B.C., was long considered an aniconic culture in which divinity was represented through animal or plant motifs, rather than idolized humans, according to the statement. Of the figurative reliefs, two are nearly complete and likely portray female divinities wearing earrings, which could be a nod to the Bronze Aged peoples' adept goldsmithing skills. Archaeologists found only fragments of the other three reliefs, but identified one as a warrior wearing a helmet, according to the statement.
Tartessian Horse Sacrifices
In November 22, 2023 study published in PLoS ONE, archaeologists announced that they that had uncovered rare evidence of ritualized animal sacrifice at the Casas del Turuñuelo archaeological site in southwestern Spain. The site dates back to the 5th century B.C. and was occupied at that time by the Tartessian culture. Laura Baisas wrote in Popular Science: In the western Mediterranean region where the Tartessos lived, archaeological evidence of animal sacrifice is difficult to come by. However, written sources including Homer’s The Odyssey chronicle animal sacrifice in the Mediterranean at this time. The gap between the written record and archaeological evidence has made it difficult for archaeologists to establish a clear understanding of what protocols and patterns were behind the practice here. [Source: Laura Baisas, Popular Science, November 23, 2023]
Pilar Iborra Eres, a study co-author and archaeologist Spain’s Instituto Valenciano de Conservación, Restauración e Investigación, told Popular Science that the Casas del Turuñuelo site is special due to the “excellent conservation of the building and its contents. In this case, the accumulation of bone remains that testify to ritual activities.” In the study, Eres and her team studied an Iron Age building and found 6,770 bones that belonged to 52 animals. The animals were predominantly adult horses, but also included cattle, pigs, and one dog. The remains show signs of intentional burial, which is one clue that they were sacrificed.
The team found that the animals had been buried in three sequential phases. In the first two phases, the skeletons were found to be mostly complete and unaltered. In the third phase, all of the skeletons except the horses show signs of having been processed for food. This suggests that a meal likely accompanied this ritual. The bones indicate that adult animals were selected for sacrifice rather than young. The presence of burned plant and animal remains also shows that fires played a role in these rituals.
Casas del Turuñuelo also shows some unique features compared to other Mediterranean sites, including the large number of sacrificed horses. “The equine remains were discovered as a result of a methodical excavation of one of the areas of this building, the courtyard,” says Eres. “This is where animal sacrifices were made during the use of the building by Iron Age societies. The space was also likely used repeatedly over several years for a variety of sacrificial rituals.
Tartessian Alphabets
In June 2024, Spanish archaeologists announced they had discovered a 2600-year-old Tartessian stone with puzzling symbols carved onto it that they believed were letters of an ancient alphabet. If this interpretation holds up, the stone is the third-ever "southern Paleo-Hispanic alphabet of which there is evidence," according to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). In a press release the CSIC said that the stone was discovered at the Casas del Turuñuelo in the southwestern Spanish province of Badajoz. The slate is around 20 centimeters (8 inches long) and dates back as early as 600 B.C. The discovery was is part of a project called "Building Tartessus". [Source: Andrea Vacchiano, Fox News, June 14, 2024]
Joan Ferrer i Jané, a researcher from the University of Barcelona, recognized the artifact as Tartessian. "Beyond the figures, when I looked at the plate, I saw that on one of the sides there seemed to be a Paleo-Hispanic sign, a sign that cannot be confused with any other," he explained. "Other strokes compatible with signs of a known sequence [were also seen]. This alphabet has 27 signs and is the only complete one we know to date. Another was found in the excavation of Villasviejas del Tamuja (Cáceres) but it is very fragmented, it only has some central signs… [this one] would be the third and would provide a lot of information."
On the stone tablet, experts identified "what appears to be a sequence of 21 signs drawn within the framework of the tablet on which figures of warriors were also found . Experts are trying to decode the symbols. According to CSIC, The 21 signs drawn on the tablet are considered incomplete, and experts believe it once held as many as 32 symbols. "At least 6 signs would have been lost in the split area of the piece, but if it were completely symmetrical and the signs completely occupied three of the four sides of the plate it could reach 32 signs, so the lost signs could become eleven or perhaps more if a possible sign, ‘Tu’, isolated in the lateral quarter, were part of the alphabet," Ferrer explained.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Live Science, Wikipedia, National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Discover magazine, Discovery News, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP and various books and other publications.
Last updated May 2024