The Lower Epoch of Iberian Culture, 40 years later. Symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the AEAA.
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The Low Period of Iberian Culture, 40 years later. Symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the AEAA.
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.
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 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.
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.
El proyecto Gadir Cartaginesa. Estrategias sociales y respuestas rituales en situaciones de crisis (PGC2018-097481-B-I00). Plan Estatal de Investigación. Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (2019-2021) se focaliza en el análisis y relectura de un tipo muy característico de estructuras localizadas en la antigua ciudad de Gadir (Cádiz), conocidas en la literatura científica como “pozos rituales”. Son estructuras subterráneas que aparecen colmatadas de materiales y restos orgánicos producto de la celebración en ellas de distintos actos rituales.
El objetivo principal es explicar las razones culturales e históricas por las que surgen, se desarrollan y desaparecen estas estructuras, y las acciones que las generan. Para ello es necesario fijar la cronología de los contextos, por una parte, e identificar y aislar los distintos pasos de la «cadena operativa ritual», por otra.
Los resultados obtenidos hasta ahora permiten plantear que se trate de un ritual ancestral gaditano que se potencia con la llegada de las tropas cartaginesas a la ciudad, posiblemente como medio para canalizar la conflictividad social, latente o manifiesta, que la situación debió generar en la ciudad; y que desaparece lentamente cuando esta finaliza.
Several recent research projects, including the European Music Archaeology Project (2013-2018), have made significant progress in the study of music in Prehistory and Antiquity. The interdisciplinary requirements to address such disparate aspects as the technological study of archaeological musical instruments, their experimental reconstruction, their performance (necessary for acoustic and musical characterisation) and their socio-cultural contextualisation have demanded not only significant funding, but also the collaboration of scholars and specialists from all over the world. Despite the long history of the discipline, this work has made it possible to trace technological relationships, cultural borrowings and local innovations that lie at the roots of the various European musics.
The Geological and Mining Institute of Spain presents Archaeology, Hydrogeology and Environment in the Bronze Age of La Mancha: the Culture of the Motillas, a work of high scientific dissemination that exposes part of the results of the research co-funded in 2014 by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports of the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha and the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain.
The book explains what life was like during Prehistoric times in La Mancha 2000 years BC. The contents include an exhaustive bibliography and a complete review of the Motilla or Bronze Age Culture of La Mancha. It also provides new data that were unknown until now. In summary, our ancestors suffered a very prolonged drought that led them to build a network of wells (motillas) in this region to supply themselves with water from the aquifer, given that the surface water disappeared from the rivers and springs. At the same time as the wells, burial mounds were built, monuments oriented to the stars in which complex rituals were performed (deposit of offerings, burial of the deceased and transfer of their bones once they had been skeletonised, etc.). Several drawings show the reader the reconstruction of everyday scenes from those times; in fact, they are innovative interpretative proposals that facilitate the understanding of the data offered.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
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.
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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