This conference will bring together leading specialists in the field of music and sound in Prehistory and Protohistory. Sound is one of our sources of perception, which is why its importance is universal and timeless. We cannot pinpoint when and how music arose, but archaeological remains show that it has been with us since our most remote past, at least as long as we have been sapiens.
Through the analysis of both the preserved pieces and their archaeological context, and with the support of ethnoarchaeology, experimental archaeology, iconographic sources and, where possible, also written sources, we approach the soundscapes of Prehistory and Protohistory, times when music and sound formed part of the daily and ritual life of their societies.
HistoryLab
for Civic Engagement
HistoryLab
for Civic Engagement
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The site of Los Castillejos de Alcorrín has been studied since 2007 by a team led by Dirce Marzoli and made up of researchers from the German Archaeological Institute, the Centre for Phoenician and Punic Studies and the municipality of Manilva, from an interdisciplinary perspective. The location, size and size of its fortifications, as well as its good state of preservation, make Los Castillejos de Alcorrín a particularly promising site for the study of the first contacts between indigenous and Phoenician populations in the context of the Strait of Gibraltar in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. Its strategic position, the exceptional dimensions of this agglomeration and the complexity of its double walled enclosure are evidence of a high concentration of power. With a surface area of 13 hectares and a wall more than 2,000 m long, it is the largest known fortified settlement in the eastern confines of the Tartessian cultural area. From this site access was controlled to a mineral-rich hinterland, north of the mouth of the Guadiaro River where a Phoenician settlement was founded near Casa de Montilla (San Roque, Cádiz), precisely when the settlement of Los Castillejos de Alcorrín was founded.
Peña Negra is one of the main protohistoric sites in the southeast, with a wide sequence from the end of the 10th century BC to the third quarter of the 6th century BC, having been identified with the city of Herna cited in the sources. The site was excavated between the 1970s and 1990s. In 2014, research was restarted, which has made it possible to analyse the transformations of this indigenous nucleus, with new data on the urban planning and ancient topography of the orientalising city, largely due to the direct contact with the Phoenician populations settled at the mouth of the Segura River, making it one of the main sites on the peninsula for analysing the interaction between both ethnic groups.
The fortified settlement of Cerro de la Mesa, based on the control of a crucial ford in the middle Tagus valley, played an important role in the economic and cultural development of its territory during the first millennium BC. Excavations have documented different structures such as walls, bastions, pits, roads and ceremonial and domestic spaces, in a complex superimposition of occupation phases from the 7th to the 1st century BC. The application of new non-destructive technologies, such as geophysical prospecting and aerial imaging, have made it possible to understand the complex urban fabric of this settlement, limiting excavation needs and making it possible to plan the different actions aimed at enhancing the value of this important site
The project “La ruta de las Estrímnides: comercio mediterráneo e interculturalidad en el Noroeste de Iberia” (HAR2015-68310-P) has aimed, on the one hand, at the historiographic review of the ancient and modern literature on the Casitérides, and, on the other hand, at the study of the archaeological record of Phoenician origin found in the castros of northern Portugal and Galicia.
We can conclude that knowledge of the Cassiterides dates back to the Archaic period, as the place where the tin that the Phoenicians traded in came from. Traces of this trade can be analysed through the Phoenician emporia in Portugal and the inland routes through the Meseta. However, from the end of the 5th century BC until the Roman period, Gadir (Cadiz) monopolised the tin trade through the direct and systematic presence of its traders in the Galician forts.
Through “three capsules” of knowledge in video format we will learn how men and women dressed in the Iron Age in the Iberian Peninsula and the sources used by archaeologists for their study. *The content of these capsules is the result of the internal research project carried out by the Department of Protohistory and Colonisation called “Protohistoric weaving and clothing”. Susana de Luis Mariño (Department of Protohistory and Colonisation) and Elena Aznar Medina (Archaeologist specialising in protohistoric weaving).
A key site on the northern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, the Silla del Papa was occupied throughout the first millennium BC. In constant contact with the populations of the African coast, this fortified enclave was successively influenced by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans. It developed a particularly original form of high-rise urban planning. Its inhabitants abandoned it at the beginning of the reign of Augustus to build a new city, more in keeping with the canons of Roman urban planning and on the edge of the Atlantic coast (Baelo Claudia).
The site probably already bore the name that the High-Imperial municipality would keep: “Bailo”, according to the bilingual legend (Punic and Latin) on its coins. Today it lies 4 km from the coast, at the highest point of a small mountain range, the Sierra de la Plata (457 m), which closes off the bay of Bolonia to the west. The site has three advantages that could not but attract the people who frequented the strait: formidable natural defences formed by almost vertical rocky outcrops, an abundance of water from a spring at the foot of these rocky outcrops, and finally, a commanding position offering extensive views in all directions: Tangier to the south, Djebel Moussa and Ceuta to the east, and Cape Trafalgar and the Bay of Cadiz to the west. As will be seen in this paper, this oppidum was home to a mixed community, with indigenous and Semitic components first, and possibly Italic later. As a result of an international and inter-university research project, several sectors of the habitat, two necropolises and a Visigothic church have been excavated at the Silla del Papa in recent years.
Archaeological research in Pintia (Padilla de Duero – Pesquera de Duero, Valladolid) can be considered to have begun in 1979, after the discovery and first intervention in the necropolis of Las Ruedas, and has continued uninterruptedly since then until the present day.
Forty years of archaeological research into the habitat, the necropolis, the potteries and the defensive systems of the city have made it possible to construct, with due caution, a Vaccean identity that until recently had been diluted in the paradigm of Celtiberianisation. While this concept has just been superseded, “Vaccean archaeology” finds in Pintia one of its most solid bulwarks.
In contrast to the old paradigms that opposed a Mediterranean of cities and states to a Celtic Europe of villages and tribes, new archaeological research now depicts the end of the Second Iron Age as a complex and dynamic world, in which state structures developed and a characteristic urbanism germinated. Following the publication of the volume Oppida. Cities of Celtic Europe, published by the journal Desperta Ferro Archaeology and History, the symposium brings together a dozen researchers to analyse the keys to these phenomena in different areas of the Celtic world – demography, society, urban planning, identities and warfare – from the Iberian Peninsula to Gaul, in the period before the intervention of Rome.
In October 2015, as chance would have it, during a preliminary archaeological impact study, a Neolithic funerary structure was located, which has since been the object of study in different archaeological interventions. It has also become the backbone of a more ambitious project of research, conservation and enhancement, which is being promoted by the City Council of San Martín del Rey Aurelio (Asturias).
This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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