Almizaraque

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Broken bronze ax from Almizaraque

Almizaraque is an excavation site in the Vera Basin about 1.5 km north of the Spanish city ​​of Palomares . On a hill about four meters high, 100 m long and 60 m wide, there was a prehistoric settlement of the Los Millares culture .

exploration

In 1903 and 1906 the Belgian mining engineer Luis Siret (1860–1934) found a female statuette on the hill and Iron Age ceramics in the southwest . In 1907 he carried out the first excavations. In 1932 and 1933 he returned and carried out further excavations. From 1980 to 1984, the Spanish archaeologist Germán Delibes de Castro conducted further investigations in Almizaraque. Today the hill is badly eroded and it is estimated that only one sixth of the settlement remained.

description

Almizaraque is located in the parcel of the same name between the two rivers Almanzora and Rambla de la Canalejas (also called Rambla de Muleria), about 1.2 km northwest of their confluence. The Mediterranean coast is about 3 km east and the place Las Herrerias about 1 km northwest.

Five successive layers of settlement were discovered. The lowest and oldest dates from 2500 to 2100 BC. Over 300 years, an originally Neolithic settlement slowly evolved into a Copper Age settlement of around 2500 m² with round wooden huts, silos, pits and small sheds. In the east, the area was intercepted by a retaining wall made of clay. In fields that were laid out near the settlement, agriculture and livestock were farmed, as shown by goat, sheep, cattle and pig bones. Deer were also hunted.

The following four layers only cover the period from 2100 to 1900 BC. In the second layer a decrease in population becomes apparent. The settlement shrank to 1300 m² with significantly fewer houses. The round houses were now larger with a diameter of 5–6 m. Objects made of flint, bones and a vessel that can be assigned to the bell beaker culture were found . Agriculture was more advanced. Probably due to desertification , a further rapid decline in settlement can be detected in the third layer. Almizaraque is temporarily shrinking to 400 m². In the fourth phase, the settlement is surrounded by a wall. The wall that follows the course of the terrain surrounds an area of ​​700 m². While most metal objects are found in this layer, the proportion of stone and bone tools is decreasing. The ceramic, which has always been ocher until now, is gray. In the last phase a new wall was built. It was more straightforward, but had an irregular structure. It is still partially visible today. Presumably because of repeated desertification, the settlement was closed around 1900 BC. Finally abandoned.

The Almizaraque necropolis was found near the settlement . The remains of a Roman settlement and Visigothic graves date from later times .

Almizaraque eye idols made from long bones

interpretation

Almizaraque was only a small place with about 50 to 70 inhabitants. Analyzes of slag residues show that mainly ore from the Sierra Almagrera mountains to the east was processed. Since the ore extracted there has a high proportion of arsenic , arsenic bronze can be obtained directly without adding an alloying element . However, there was no industry and only small amounts were produced for personal consumption.

Olaf Höckmann pointed out that a female ivory figure excavated in Almizaraque, with a pubic triangle filled with dots, is very reminiscent of Cretan specimens. These date from the early Minoan period (2600–1900 BC) and imitate figures from the Cycladic culture . This was interpreted as an indication of the cultural relationship between the two cultural areas, which are said to have brought bronze production to southern Spain first. Since the mid-1980s, Spanish scientists tried to prove an independent Iberian development of bronze production. So far, neither of the two theories has been clearly proven.

Also worth mentioning are the idol typical of the Los Millares culture in the form of a sandal made of bone or ivory from a house of the settlement and the eye idols , which were carved in long bones.

literature

  • Martín Almagro Basch: EI poblado de Almizaraque de Herrerias (Almerfa). - Atti del VI Congresso Internazionale delle Scienze Preistoriehe e Protoistoriche, Roma, Comunicazioni sezione 1-11. 1962, pp. 378-379
  • Maria-Josefa Almagro Gorbea: Las tres tumbas megaliticas de Almizaraque. - Trabajos de Prehistoria 18 (1965).

Web links

Commons : Almizaraque  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Saskia Piguet-Collet: Almizaraque (Cuevas del Almanzora / Almeria) in L'Andalousie préhistorique , Geneva 2012, pp. 77-79 ( online )
  2. ^ Roland Müller, Thilo Rehren, Salvador Rovira: Almizaraque and the early copper metallurgy of Southeast Spain: New data in Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaologische Institut. Madrid Department , Volume 45, January 2004, pp. 33–56 ( online )
  3. ^ Olaf Höckmann: Early Bronze Age cultural relations in the Mediterranean area with special consideration of the Cyclades in Hans-Günter Buchholz (Ed.): Aegean Bronze Age , Darmstadt 1987, ISBN 3-534-07028-3 , p. 104
  4. ↑ Michael Kunst: The Copper Age of the Iberian Peninsula in Michael Blech, Michael Koch, Michael Kunst: Monuments of the Early Period , Mainz 2001, ISBN 3-8053-2804-4 , p. 69

Coordinates: 37 ° 15 '53.4 "  N , 1 ° 47' 17.5"  W.