scholarly journals Landscape construction and time reckoning in Iron Age Celtic Iberia

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 479-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. César González-García ◽  
Marco V. García Quintela ◽  
Juan A. Belmonte

In this paper, we report on three areas of the Iberian Peninsula that were occupied at least during the Iron Age and the early stages of Romanisation, where observations of astronomical phenomena in the landscape, rock carvings, and Latin inscriptions point to a particular method of time reckoning. All of these sites have previously been connected with the Celtic culture. The knowledge of the natural world that Classical sources assigned to these peoples need not have been reflected in a monolithic calendrical system used by all Celtic communities on the Continent. In fact, such a ‘Celtic calendar’ may have had different expressions in different areas, expressed in different ways, although sharing some common characteristics such as the particual use of the lunar and solar cycles.

Author(s):  
Silvia Albizuri ◽  
Aurora Grandal-d’Anglade ◽  
Julià Maroto ◽  
Mònica Oliva ◽  
Alba Rodríguez ◽  
...  

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (S278) ◽  
pp. 382-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Pérez Gutiérrez ◽  
Jordi Diloli Fons ◽  
David Bea Castaño ◽  
Samuel Sardà Seuma

AbstractArchaeological excavations carried out at Turó del Calvari (Tarragona, Spain) have revealed a protohistoric building interpreted as one of the earliest enclosures of power operating during the Early Iron Age in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. The structure is exceptional in several respects: the techniques of construction, the materials used, and the topographic situation. The building is perfectly integrated in the landscape and has an exquisite geometrical design, with measurement units based on the Iberian foot. The intended beauty in having used the golden ratio in its construction and an orientation that is both stellar and solar demonstrates the existence at that time of a complete series of mechanisms of representation and territorial control. This was based on the use of rituals and feasts as elements of political cohesion by an emergent elite within a process that reproduced a scaled-down Mediterranean cultural system in an indigenous space.


Author(s):  
A. Lorrio ◽  
J. Sanmartí

This chapter summarizes current knowledge of the human geography of the Iberian peninsula during the Iron Age. It compares and contrasts different sources (Greek and Latin texts, coins minted by indigenous peoples, and archaeological evidence) to recreate the palaeoethnological panorama of the region and reconstruct the historical processes that led to its formation, including the impact of the Phoenicians and Greeks. This analysis indicates the existence of a linguistically non-Indo-European area, mainly the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastal regions between the Pyrenees and the mouth of the Guadiana, and an Indo-European one in the centre of the peninsula and along the greater part of the Atlantic coast. Ethnic groups of varying size and political importance are attested in both areas. Population growth and iron metallurgy played a crucial role in the formation of this human reality, together with the development of urbanization, which started in the Mediterranean coastal areas and progressively spread.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Luis Berrocal-Rangel ◽  
Rosario García-Giménez ◽  
Raquel Vigil de la Villa ◽  
Carmen Gutiérrez-Sáez ◽  
Lucía Ruano ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 5009-5022
Author(s):  
Verónica Estaca-Gómez ◽  
Gonzalo José Linares-Matás

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 363 (6432) ◽  
pp. 1230-1234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iñigo Olalde ◽  
Swapan Mallick ◽  
Nick Patterson ◽  
Nadin Rohland ◽  
Vanessa Villalba-Mouco ◽  
...  

We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula. We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming. We reveal sporadic contacts between Iberia and North Africa by ~2500 BCE and, by ~2000 BCE, the replacement of 40% of Iberia’s ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with Steppe ancestry. We show that, in the Iron Age, Steppe ancestry had spread not only into Indo-European–speaking regions but also into non-Indo-European–speaking ones, and we reveal that present-day Basques are best described as a typical Iron Age population without the admixture events that later affected the rest of Iberia. Additionally, we document how, beginning at least in the Roman period, the ancestry of the peninsula was transformed by gene flow from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.


Author(s):  
Javier Jiménez Ávila

Se estudia un conjunto de objetos formado por dos embocaduras de caballo y dos camas laterales de bronce conservados en el Museo Juan Cabré de Calaceite (Teruel). Corresponden a la colección que reunió D. Juan Cabré Aguiló y que, a su muerte, fue dividida entre sus dos hijos. No se conocen datos acerca de su procedencia ni sobre el modo en que llegaron los objetos a la colección, pero la calidad del material y la escasez de este tipo de productos en la arqueología peninsular elevan su interés. De su estudio se deriva su relación con un conjunto de arreos que se producen y se usan en la península ibérica a finales de la I Edad del Hierro y que cuenta con buenas representaciones en la Extremadura post-orientalizante y en la Alta Andalucía ibérica, particularmente en la zona de Jaén.An equestrian set composed by two bronze horse bits and two bit guards, also made in bronze, is studied. They are preserved in the Juan Cabré Museum (Calaceite, Spain) corresponding to the collection gathered by the Spanish archaeologist Juan Cabré Aguiló (1882-1947). Data about origin or the way that such objects came to the Cabré Collection are unknown, but their quality and the shortage of this type of objects in the Iberian archaeology underline their interest. The study shows a near relationship with a kind of bronze harnesses that were produced and used in Iberian Peninsula at the end of the Early Iron Age. This kind of bits have good references in the post-Orientalizing Extremadura and in the Iberian high Andalusia, particularly in the Jaén area.


2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
César Parcero Oubiña

The article reviews the usefulness of the historical–anthropological models of peasantry and Germanic Mode of Production applied to the analysis of the Castro culture (Cultura Castrexa, the Iron Age of the north-western Iberian Peninsula). A historical reconstruction of the period is developed, in which the strain between local community and familial units constitutes one of the most important agents in the process of change, according to a discourse largely based on the proposals of P. Clastres on ‘societies against the state’. A relevant role is given to different forms of violence and conflict; initially they are understood as active mechanisms in inter-community relations although later they would rather become virtual and latent elements that allow the development of a model of social relations that can be defined as a non-class ‘heroic society’.


Complutum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Francisco B. Gomes

 First highlighted as possible markers for early, 2nd millennium BCE contacts between the Iberian Peninsula and the Eastern Mediterranean, phytomorphic carnelian pendants have become a significant part of the discussion on that subject. However, a number of new finds which have taken place in recent years have transformed the available image regarding both the geographic distribution and the chronological setting of these pieces. An updated overview is presented here, which suggests they should now preferably be considered as part of the array of prestige goods introduced in the Far West by Phoenician trade between the later stages of the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age


Author(s):  
Silvia Carnicero-Cáceres ◽  
Jesús F. Torres-Martínez

The practice of child burials underneath house floors in the Late Prehistory has been considered a characteristic trait of the Iberian religion. However, this custom has also been documented in different archaeological sites both in the Mediterranean and Central Europe as well as Celtic areas of the Iberian Peninsula, so we can explain this funerary practice by an Indo-European origin. We report the archeotanatological and osteoarcheological study of 10 subadults found in the Iron Age site of Monte Bernorio oppidum, the first archeological site in the western and central Cantabrian region with this funerary rite documented. It is the confirmation of both, the survival of an ancient funerary ritual, widely extended in all Europe, and its presence in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. We also review all the archeological sites in the Iberian Peninsula with similar archeological contexts and analyse the rite from the bioarcheology of the care.


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