Emerging in history: Tartessos and Phoenician colonization
Tartessos is the name that identifies the peninsula in the first historical records, that is, in ancient Greek literature. That was the time of the expansion of eastern cultural influence on other parts of the Mediterranean (from the eighth to sixth c.
BCE). Tartessian culture had its core in lower Andalusia and seems to have developed from the cultural contact between the indigenous Late Bronze Age peninsula, the source of mineral wealth. The graveyards (La Joya in Huelva and Los Alcores in Carmona) display evidence of both cremation and inhumation; stelae and markers are common features. Especially interesting is the necropolis of Las Cumbres in Castillo de Doha Blanca, province of Cadiz. There the oldest cremation sites dating to the first half of the eighth century BCE were local and presented little evidence of social differences. A later group of burials, dating from the seventh century BCE, evidenced funeral rites that included libations, incense and oil-based perfumes, all Phoenician traits that indicate a clear social hierarchy.An outstanding complex is the one at Pozo Moro (Chinchilla, Albacete), once thought to have dated from around 500 BCE, but now considered to date from the time of the arrival of Oriental culture, around the end of the seventh century, with expert sculptors coming from Syria during the Phoenician colonization, although the monument was subsequently re-used in the Iberian era (Bendala Galan 2007). The complex, shaped like a tower, is reminiscent of neo-Hittite models in its art. The monument displays extraordinary iconography, the scene of a sacrificial banquet with a human victim and an animal one, a hero carrying the tree of fertility and uniting in hierogamy with a goddess. Perhaps it is a depiction of a mythical tale of origin or an exaltation of the heroic deeds of the dynasty’s ancestors, or of the ruling elite, in the context of “divine kingship”.
More on the topic Emerging in history: Tartessos and Phoenician colonization:
- Conquest, Colonization, and Christianity
- Bredholt Christensen Lisbeth, Hammer Olav, Warburton David. The Handbook of Religions in Ancient Europe. Acumen,2013. — 456 p., 2013