MARTÍN ALMAGRO-GORBEA(EDITOR)

IBERIA. PROTOHISTORY OF THE FAR WEST OF EUROPE:FROM NEOLITHIC TO ROMAN CONQUEST

BURGOS, 2014

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Published thanks to Junta de Castilla y León through Fundación Siglo para las Artes y el Turismo de Castilla y León

Photos from the covert: 1, Bowman of Levantine Art from Val del Charco del Agua Amarga (Alcañiz, Teruel); 2, Neolithic vessel from Cueva de los Murciélagos (Zuheros, Córdoba); 3 Fortified main gate of Los Millares (Almería); 4 Pithos burial of El Argar Culture (La Bastida, Totana, Murcia); 5, Naveta of Els Tudons (Menorca); 6, Treasure of Villena (Alicante); 7 Ritual sauna of Briteiros (Portugal); 8 Orientalizing lion of Pozo Moro (Albacete); 9 Pyrenean cromlech of Kausko I, Oyarzum, Guipuzcoa (for further details, see text).

© Texts: The authors and the Fundación Atapuerca © Images: The creators and the Fundación Atapuerca© Current Edition: The Fundación Atapuerca and the Universidad de Burgos

Publisher: UNIVERSIDAD DE BURGOS SERVICIO DE PUBLICACIONES E IMAGEN INSTITUCIONAL Edificio de Administración y Servicios C/ Don Juan de Austria, nº 1 09001 BURGOS – SPAIN

FUNDACIÓN ATAPUERCA Carretera de Logroño nº 44 09198 Ibeas de Juarros (Burgos).

ISBN: 978-84-92681-91-4 (Printed Edition) 978-84-92681-92-1 (e-book)

Legal Deposit: BU-208. – 2014

Photocomposition: Rico Adrados, S.L. (Burgos)Print: Rico Adrados, S.L. (Burgos)

Introduction, Martín Almagro-Gorbea ................................................................................................. 7

Neolithic and Chalcolithic: Towards complex societies ...................................................................... 17

The first Mediterranean Neolithic farmers (VI-V Millennia BC), Bernat Martí Oliverand Joaquim Juan-Cabanilles ............................................................................................... 19

The Neolithic in inland and Northern Iberia, Manuel A. Rojo Guerra ....................................... 43

Mediterranean Iberia in the 4TH and 3RD Millennia, Joan Bernabeu Aubán y Teresa Orozco Köhler .... 71

Southern Iberia in the 4TH and 3RD Millennia Cal. BC, Francisco Nocete .................................... 83

The Chalcolithic in the Central Plateau and its Atlantic fringe (3200-2500 cal. AD),Germán Delibes de Castro .................................................................................................... 95

Bell-Beakers in Iberia, Rafael Garrido Pena ............................................................................... 113

Bronze Age: The complex societies ..................................................................................................... 125

The Bronze Age in Mediterranean Iberia, Vicente Lull, Rafael Micó, Cristina Rihuete yRoberto Risch ........................................................................................................................ 127

The Balearic Islands: From stable human colonisation until the Roman Conquest, Vicente Lull,Rafael Micó, Cristina Rihuete y Roberto Risch ....................................................................... 147

Atlantic Iberia: A threshold between East and West, Marisa Ruiz-Gálvez ................................. 161

Iron Age: The final process to urban life ............................................................................................. 181

The Lusitanians, Martín Almagro-Gorbea .................................................................................. 183

The Urnfields, Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero ....................................................................................... 195

The Celtic peoples, Alberto J. Lorrio .......................................................................................... 217

Taršiš, Tartessos, Turdetania, Mariano Torres Ortiz ..................................................................... 251

Mediterranean Iberia: the Iberian peoples, Martín Almagro-Gorbea … ...................................... 285

The Vascons, Martín Almagro-Gorbea ........................................................................................ 319

Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................... 325

Contents

1

introduction

1

This book Iberia. Prehistory of the Far West of Europe: From Neolithic to the Roman Conquest is an up to date summary –including future research prospects– of the early history of the Iberian Peninsula, the westernmost extremity –the Far West–of the Old Continent, the last land of Eurasia.

This book has been edited for the XVII Congress of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (IUPPS), held in Burgos in 2014, but it is aimed at a general audience seeking to understand the final millennia of this land’s Prehistory, from the first Neolithic populations to the Romanization process. Volume I, Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula, covers the hunter-gatherer cultures from the first hominins to the Epipalaeolithic or Mesolithic. It presents the main archaeological sites and through them, the contemporary cultural and environmental features. By contrast, Volume II is designed as a series of 15 short essays that form a representative mosaic of the many cultures and peoples that made up the Late Prehistory and the Early History of the Iberian Peninsula from the Neolithic to its Romanization. It therefore offers a view of the last six millennia of history before our era, from the emergence of the first farmers to the predominance of urban life when our lands joined the Roman Empire.

In order to fully comprehend the importance of the Late Prehistory and the Early History of the Iberian Peninsula, we need to evaluate its geographical context, a key aspect in its human landscape since Prehistory1. The complexity and

1 For the geography of the Iberian Peninsula, see Hernández Pacheco, E., 1955 and 1956, Fisiografía del Solar Hispano, I-II, Madrid; Schulten, A., 1959-1963, Geografía y Etnografía antiguas de la Península Ibérica, I-II, Madrid; Lautensch, H., 1967, Geografía de España y Portugal, Barcelona; Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, 1980, Los paisajes rurales de España. Valladolid; Terán, M. de, et al., 1986, Geografía general de España. Barcelona; Floristán, A., 1988, España, país de contrastes geográficos naturales, Madrid; Vilá Valentí, J., 1997, La Península Ibérica, Barcelona; Franco, T., 1998, Geografía física de España, Madrid; Instituto Geográfico Nacional, 2000, Atlas Nacional de España. El medio físico, I-II, Madrid.

the location of the Iberian Peninsula, the ancient Hispania of the Phoenicians, Punics and Romans, and the Iberia for the Greeks, is such that it can be regarded as a small microcontinent between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic in the western part of Europe, at the end of Eurasia, very close to Africa, from which it is isolated by the Sahara desert. This is the westernmost of the four peninsulas that articulate the northern shores of the Mediterranean-Anatolia, the Balkans with Greece, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. The latter three form the Southern Europe, which in turn are a minor peninsula at the western end of the Afro-Asian Continent. The Iberian Peninsula covers 583,256 km2 and is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the east and south and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and north. The Pyrenees form an isthmus less than 500 km long which connects it to the Continental mass, while the Strait of Gibraltar, just 14 km wide, separates it from Africa.

Its territory has a great personality and diversity (Fig. 1). Its topography is characterized by a large Central Plateau, part of the ancient Precambrian and Paleozoic Iberian Massif, tilted slightly to the west, which has determined its river basins. This plateau is surrounded by mountain ranges and depressions formed during the Alpine orogeny. Its mountainous nature is obvious in its average height of 660 metres, only surpassed in Europe by Switzerland and Austria, with the highest peak at 3478 m, Mulhacén (Granada).

The Central Plateau is surrounded by mostly Alpine orogenic ranges: the Basque-Cantabrian Mountains to the north, the Iberian Mountain Range to the east and Sierra Morena to the south, as well as the Central Mountain Range, which splits the Plateau in two from east to west and separates the Duero basin from the Tagus and the Guadiana. The peripheral zones include the Pyrenees, an isthmus that separates the Peninsula from France, the Galicia Hills in the north-west, the Catalonia Coastal Range in the north-east, and the Baetic System in the south-east and the south. Flat areas

Introduction

IBERIA. PROTOHISTORY OF THE FAR WEST OF EUROPE10

are scarce, and include the Guadalquivir Depression in the west and the Ebro in the north-east, along with south-central Portugal, the Valencia coastal plain and the plains on the Central Plateau.

In addition to the orographic differences, there are many lithological zones (Fig. 2). The western area has siliceous Paleozoic soils formed by granite, slate and quartzite, rich in gold, silver, tin and copper. These areas are more suitable for livestock grazing than for agriculture, enhanced by their cool, moist Atlantic climate. By contrast, the eastern zones and the mountain ranges of the Alpine fold are predominated by Secondary limestone, with karst formations accentuated by fluvial erosion. In these areas, many of them clad by Holm oak (Q. ilex) and pine forests, life continues in their valleys, based on orchard crops that are irrigated to mitigate the dryness. Finally, in the Guadalquivir and Ebro depressions, the river valleys of the Central Plateau and the coastal plains are predominated by Tertiary and Quaternary clay formations. Their

soils are suitable for cereal farming, adapted to the Mediterranean multicropping system of cereals, wine and oil, an association inserted in the early development of urban life during the second half of the first millennium BC. Whenever possible, this production was completed with irrigated orchards.

The Iberian Peninsula has over 4000 km of coastline, and indeed 6/7 of its perimeter is surrounded by sea. The coastal strip is narrow and only accessible in some sections of the east and south coasts, with a predominance of rocky coastlines and cliffs to the north, north-east and south-east, with limited access to the estuaries of some rivers, which rarely penetrate more than 30 km inland. The coastline had a rising tendency in the Holocene to -20 m in 9000 BP, and stabilized at -10 m 7,000 years ago, although some coastal zones such as the Basque Country reached 1 to 2 m above the present level at the peak of the Flandrian transgression. Around 5,000 BP, the sea level descended again and then rose gradually to the current level, with

Figure 1. Physical map of the Iberian Peninsula.

11INTRODUCTION

Figure 2. Geological map of the Iberian Peninsula (Instituto Geológico-Minero de España y Portugal).

an increasing loss of the emerged coastal lands. Along with these changes in the sea level, erosion, exacerbated by human activity, also played a role in this process. The consequence was the silting of coastal marshlands, lagoons and estuaries such as the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, the ancient Lacus Ligustinus, and the formation of deltas, such as the Ebro, which began after the peak of the Flandrian transgression around 6500 BP and –with some variations– subsequently intensified due to increasing deforestation.

The Iberian climate (Fig. 3) is inserted between the tropics and the Northern Hemisphere temperate zone, and between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic2. It is therefore crossed by Atlantic

2 For climatic details, see García de Pedraza, L. & Castillo, J.M., 1981. “Influencia de la configuración topográfica de la Península Ibérica en sus carácteres meteorológicos y climáticos”, Paralelo 37, 5, 31-42; Capel, J. J., 2000, El clima de la Península

fronts and storms associated with the polar jet stream and the tropical high pressure systems of the Azores and Saharan anticyclones. This situation, together with its abrupt topography, has produced numerous microclimates with major variations in temperature and precipitation (Fig. 4), over 2000 mm in some places and less than 175 mm in Almería, with a clear north-west to south-east gradient. There are two distinct climatic zones: one moist - Atlantic (La Coruña: 10.4 °C in January, 19.2 °C in August and 1,008 mm) and the other dry - Mediterranean (Alicante 336 mm, 11.5 °C in January, 25.5 °C in August), tending to subtropical and semi-desert in the south-east

Ibérica, Barcelona. For the historic trends, see Jordá, J., 2013, “El marco paleoambiental de la Prehistoria Reciente de la Península Ibérica”, M. Menéndez, ed., Prehistoria Reciente de la Península Ibérica, Madrid, pp. 41-108. For hydrography, see Arenillas, M. & Sáenz Ridruejo, C., 1987, Guía Física de España, 3. Los ríos, Madrid.

IBERIA. PROTOHISTORY OF THE FAR WEST OF EUROPE12

Figure 3. Map of climatic regions on the Iberian Peninsula. 1: Moist maritime and Pyrenean, 2: Atlantic, 3a-c: Continental: attenuated, pure and extreme, 4: Mediterranean, 5: Sub-desert. a, Cantabrian Montain Range, Leon; b, Ferramubín, Lugo; c, Dehesa from Las Villuercas, Badajoz; d, Fortuna, Murcia; e, Salobralejo, Albacete; f, Ebro Valley, La Rioja.

(Almería: 196 mm). Moreover, the relief around the Central Plateau accentuates its dry, extreme continentality, (Soria: 2.9 °C in January, 20.0 °C in July), a feature in common with other inland areas (Cordoba: 9.2 °C in January, 27.2 °C in July), while the numerous mountain ranges above 1200 m have a characteristic mountain climate.

These climatic features were formed during the Holocene, with variations that can be explained in general terms. From the start of the Holocene, the climate on the Iberian Peninsula was dry, with a rising tendency in temperatures and humidity.

From the Atlantic onwards (9000-5800 BP) this increase in temperature and humidity rose above current levels, accompanied by the peak development of the Mediterranean forests and the progression of oaks in the Atlantic region. Around 5800 BP, there was a cold, arid episode with a significant drop in the tree cover which marked the start of the Sub-Boreal, a dryer and warmer phase (5800-2500 BP), followed by an optimum climate until 4800 BP, characterized by rising temperatures and rainfall, which again were above current levels. From 4800 BP onwards, there was a

13INTRODUCTION

decline in aridity and the inland climate was subject to the Continental Mediterranean features as they are known today, accompanied by increasing anthropogenic activity. From 3250 cal BP, the so-called Cold Iron Age, there was an overall decline in temperatures, increasing aridity, and as a result, desertification and abandonment of the mountain areas, which were gradually reoccupied in the first millennium BC. The improved climatic conditions at the end of this cold swing at the start of the Sub-Atlantic –2500 BP– facilitated the intense cultural and demographic development in the Iron Age –the Ibero-Roman Humid Period–, dated between 2500 and 1600 BP, i.e. between 500 BC and 400 AD, during which there was a further decline in the arboreal vegetation –denoting greater aridity– and probably more intense human activity.

As a consequence of this climate, the Iberian rivers carry little volume apart from those in areas with Atlantic precipitation. Their flow is highly variable and is rainfall-dependent. In some cases they carry massive runoff, exceeding 1 to 1000 in the Guadiana River. Their channels acted as

transport routes on the plains, but in many cases the steep topography and abrupt banks associated with irregular flow prevented their transit. For this reason, the transport routes (Fig. 5) were not so much determined by the rivers as by the orography, as in the case of the Via Heraclea which ascended the Guadalquivir Valley from the Gulf of Cadiz and linked up with the Mediterranean Levant coast, the Via de la Plata, which connected all the western inland siliceous areas, and the Via Celtica, which connected the Iberian Mountain Range to the south-west tracking north of the Central System3.

The topography and climate have also given rise to a varied flora and fauna, augmented by the geographic isolation of the Peninsula, which enabled many endemic species to survive, especially in the mountain ranges despite ongoing extinctions due

3 For the communication routes in Iberian Prehistory, see Almagro-Gorbea, M., “Las vías de comunicación tartési-cas”, in M. Criado de Val, ed., Atlas de Caminería His-pánica (X Congreso de Caminería, Madrid-2010), Madrid, 2011, pp. 20-25.

Figure 4. Map of annual rainfall (mm) on the Iberian Peninsula

IBERIA. PROTOHISTORY OF THE FAR WEST OF EUROPE14

Figure 5. Mains axes of communication of the Iberian Peninsula (from Ruiz Zapatero).

above all to human impact4. In the moist Atlantic areas, mixed deciduous forests of oak, beech and birch predominate. In many areas they have been transformed into meadows by anthropic action.

The dehesa (open woodland) landscapes in the siliceous areas of central and southern Iberia are particular interesting. These formations are the result of the conversion of Holm (Q. ilex) and cork oak (Q. suber) forests into sheltered grazing zones for livestock since the 4th millennium BC. In dry Mediterranean areas, Holm oak, Kermes oak and pine forests predominate, along with aromatic shrubs such as rockrose, thyme, lavender and rosemary. Hemp and aromatic

4 For vegetation, see Alcaraz, F. et alii, 1987, et alii, 1987, La vegetación de España. Madrid; Allue, 1990, Atlas fito-climático de España, Madrid; Carrion, 2005; id. ed., 2012; Peinado M. & Rivas, S., 1987, La vegetación de España, Madrid; Rubio, J.M., 1988, Biogeografía. Paisajes vegetales y vida animal, Madrid. For soils, see Gandullo, J.M., 1984, Clasificación básica de los suelos españoles. Madrid.

plants grow on the south-eastern steppes, and the Mediterranean woody vegetation is quite scarce due to anthropogenic activity. In addition, each mountain range has its own cliserie, depending on its location and altitude. Gallery forests can still be found along most rivers, which are still used to irrigate orchards, with agricultural crops that need to be watered concentrated on their banks due to the arid climate, a system documented since the third Millennium BC.

Iberia’s complex, articulated topography and lithology have accentuated the geographical differences between regions, with strong contrasts in their relief, soils, climate, vegetation, fauna and consequently, their cultures as well. Added to this physical range there have been a diverse range of cultural and ethnic trends which interacted dynamically with other territories. Three of these exogenous paths stand out in particular. One is the Mediterranean, the major route of cultural and demographic influx from southern Europe,

15INTRODUCTION

and the flow path for prehistoric contacts with the more advanced cultural nodes of the Middle East. This was the route of the arrival of the Neolithic, early metallurgy, contacts with the Mycenaean world and in the first Millennium BC, historic colonisations by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Carthaginians and eventually Rome. Another route mainly influenced the siliceous Atlantic regions in western Iberia, with contacts from the Megalithic and Bell Beakers periods with France and the British Isles in the so-called Atlantic World, whose peak was reached in the Bronze Age, probably stimulated by metalliferous exchanges. The third stream arrived from beyond the Pyrenees, and was responsible for linking the Iberian Peninsula to Central Europe. It had peak periods such as the Bell Beakers in the Chalcolithic and the Urnfields in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, when contacts intensified between the Celtic populations to the north and south of the Pyrenees, although trans-Pyrenean contacts have always existed at the local scale in the form of livestock transhumance between the mountains and the plains. Finally, we must not overlook North Africa, separate from the Iberian Peninsula only by the 14 km wide Strait of Gibraltar. However, apart from minor local contacts, there is little evidence of activity between the two sides of the Straits due to the demographic barrier created by the growing desertification of the Sahara since the recent Holocene.

The above-mentioned differences in the relief, soils, climate, vegetation, fauna and consequently the cultures and peoples of the different regions have led the Iberian Peninsula, from an ethnic, cultural and historical perspective, to be regarded as a small microcontinent located between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic at the south-western end of Europe, representing the end of Eurasia, close to Africa but isolated from it by the Sahara.

In addition to the above-mentioned factors, its broad internal diversity has been accentuated by the range of external influxes received at different times and intensities in different cultural areas. Nevertheless, all these regions possess common cultural features which enable them to be distinguished from others outside the Iberian Peninsula. In this regard, the broad Central Plateau, open to the periphery along various routes (Fig. 5), has always acted as a zone of cultural and ethnic exchange with the peripheral regions since prehistory, giving rise to “systole/diastole” processes

with varying intensities of ethno-cultural influence in step with the different time periods and cultural areas that were affected.

*

This book, Iberia. Prehistory of the Far West of Europe: From Neolithic to the Roman Conquest, is an innovative synthesis with a current perspective on the historical phenomena that took place from the Neolithic until the Romanization of the Peninsula. It has been written with a vision of the future because although it has a traditional structure, it is based on the latest innovative research using a methodology that aims to address the whole interrelated cultural system, from material culture and technology to the economy, society, ideology and religion, in addition to recent DNA-based anthropological studies and the progress made in recent years in linguistics and even prehistoric literature, read through iconography in order to gain an eminently holistic and dynamic view of the cultural process. Examples of this process can be found in the reassessment of Levantine rock Art, the Bell Beaker culture, the presentation of the Valencina de la Conception site as the main Chalcolithic demographic and cultural focal point in the third millennium BC on the Iberian Peninsula, in contrast to previous visions based on sites like Los Millares and Zambujal, and the fresh interpretation of the pre-Roman peoples and cultures in the first millennium BC, which offers a new vision with innovative features such as a new appreciation of the Lusitanians and the Vascons.

Each chapter has been written by specialists whose research and publications in their respec-tive fields are well known. This has posed an ob-vious difficulty for the unification of criteria and terminology, compounded by the diversity of perspectives and interpretations in cutting edge studies. However, these differences between the various essays are considered to be interesting in themselves, as they are evidence of the range of current interpretations and indeed mark the way for future research perspectives. Each author has made a considerable effort to adapt to the nature of this volume in a very short time frame, and they all fully deserve our sincere appreciation.

This book has three parts. One focuses on the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, ending with the Bell Beaker Culture, another covers the Bronze Age, with its dual Mediterranean-Atlantic perspective,

IBERIA. PROTOHISTORY OF THE FAR WEST OF EUROPE16

2and the final part addresses the Iron Age, regarded as the final step towards urban life, which ended with the Romanization process, the end of Prehistory on the Iberian Peninsula.

The first part, Neolithic and Chalcolithic: Towards complex societies, focuses on changes after the advent of domestication, with its cultural and demographic impact, which led to increasingly complex societies. It is structured into six essays: “The first Mediterranean Neolithic farmers (VI-V millennia BC)” by Bernat Martí Oliver and Joaquim Juan-Cabanilles, “The Neolithic in inland and Northern Iberia”, by Manuel Rojo, “Mediterranean Iberia in the 4TH and 3RD Millennia” by Joan Bernabeu Aubán and Teresa Orozco Köhler, “Southern Iberia in the 4TH and 3RD Millennia Cal. BC” by Francisco Nocete, “The Chalcolithic in the Central Plateau and its Atlantic fringe (3200-2500 cal. AD)” by Germán Delibes de Castro, and finally “Bell Beakers in Iberia”, by Rafael Garrido Pena, which is the transition and link to the next part.

The second part is devoted to the Bronze Age: The complex societies, which basically corresponds to the cultures that developed in the second millennium BC and indeed formed an almost direct substrate for the pre-Roman peoples of the Iron Age. This section contains two major essays, “The Bronze Age in Mediterranean Iberia” by Vicente Lull, Rafael Micó, Cristina Rihuete and Roberto Risch, and “The Atlantic Iberia: A threshold between East and West”, by Marisa Ruiz-Gálvez. They are accompanied by a third article on “The Balearic Islands: from stable human colonisation to the Roman conquest”, by Vicente Lull, Rafael Micó, Cristina Rihuete and Roberto Risch, since the cultural structure of the islands basically corresponds to the same period.

The third and final part is about Iron Age: The final process to urban life. The final six essays in this volume focus on the pre-Roman cultures and peoples known from classical sources, whose features have been confirmed by current archaeological and linguistic research. The list of titles reflects their varying degree of relationship to the previously discussed Bronze Age cultures and their own intra-relationships. These essays are: “The Lusitanians” by Martín Almagro Gorbea, “The Urnfields” by Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero, “The Celtic peoples” by Alberto J. Lorrio, “Tarshish, Tartessos, Turdetania” by Mariano Torres Ortiz, “Mediterranean Iberia: The Iberian peoples” by Martín Almagro Gorbea, and concludes with Martín Almagro Gorbea’s “The Vascons”, one of the most interesting and controversial peoples in the Protohistory of Europe, from whom today’s Basques are part descendants.

In conclusion, Iberia. Prehistory of the Far West of Europe: From Neolithic to the Roman Conquest is intended to be an overview of the last six millennia of the Iberian Protohistory, from the first farmers to the full development of urban life until the Romanization process. Its purpose is to stimulate all those potentially interested –both specialists and the general public– in the Protohistory of the Iberian Peninsula. The complexity of the cultural phenomena in this period can also help to explain ongoing myths and historical processes whose roots are sunk in these early times, deriving “long-term” process from them. The potential fascination of the Protohistory of the Iberian Peninsula, this small microcontinent at the south-western tip of Eurasia, is, however, also a call for increasingly necessary international scientific collaboration on these highly attractive fields of multidisciplinary research.

MARTÍN ALMAGRO-GORBEA Royal Academy of History