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AEGAEUM 41
Annales liégeoises et PASPiennes d’archéologie égéenne

ΕΣΠΕΡΟΣ / ΗESPEROS

THE AEGEAN SEEN FROM THE WEST

Proceedings of the 16th International Aegean Conference,
University of Ioannina,
Department of History and Archaeology,
Unit of Archaeology and Art History,
18-21 May 2016

Edited by Michael FOTIADIS, Robert LAFFINEUR, Yannos LOLOS,

and Andreas VLACHOPOULOS

PEETERS
LEUVEN - LIÈGE
2017
 CONTENTS
Preface ix

KEYNOTE LECTURE

Sebastiano TUSA
The Ancient and Long History of East, Central and West Mediterranean Sea Routes 3

I. IBERIA - BALEARIC ISLANDS - CORSICA - SARDINIA

Alfredo MEDEROS MARTIN

The Mycenaean contacts with the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Bronze Age (1625-1150 BC) 25

Vangelis NIKOLOPOULOS
The Aegean itself or its reflection? Absence and presence of Aegean cultural elements in the Bronze Age
Balearic Islands and the Iberian Peninsula 41

Marisa RUIZ-GALVEZ, Eduardo GALÁN

From shepherds to heroes: Mediterranean iconography of power in the far West 53

Kewin PECHE-QUILICHINI, Ludovic BELLOT-GURLET, Joseph CESARI, Bernard GRATUZE,

Jean GRAZIANI, Franck LEANDRI, Hélène PAOLINI-SAEZ
From Shardania to Læstrygonia… Eastern origin prestige goods and technical transfers in Corsica through Middle
and Final Bronze Age 61

Alessandro USAI
Sardinia and the Aegean World in the Bronze Age: advances in understanding 73

Anna DEPALMAS, Claudio BULLA, Giovanna FUNDONI

Some observations on bronze productions in Nuragic Sardinia between Aegean influences and autonomous creation 81

II. CENTRAL MEDITERRANEAN - MALTA - SICILY - ITALY

Giulia RECCHIA, Alberto CAZZELLA

Permeable boundaries in the late 3rd Millennium BC Central Mediterranean: contacts and mobility between
the Balkans, Greece, Southern Itay and Malta 93

Fritz BLAKOLMER
Spirals from Malta and ‘ropes and pulleys’ from the Eurasian steppe? On the origin of some ornaments
of the Aegean Bronze Age 105

Orazio PALIO, Simona V. TODARO, Maria TURCO

The Etnean area and the Aegean World between the end of the 3rd and the first half of the 2nd Millennium BC:
new data from Valcorrente at Belpasso (Catania) 115

Sara Tiziana LEVI, Alessandro VANZETTI, Ernesto DE MIRO

Cannatello, Sicily: the connective history of the LBA Central Mediterranean hub 123

Massimo CULTRARO, Clemente MARCONI

Mycenaeans and others along Western Sicily : a view from Selinunte 131
iv CONTENTS

Pietro Maria MILITELLO, Katarzyna ŻEBROWSKA

Tholos tombs in Sicily: a landscape approach 139

Sara Tiziana LEVI, Marco BETTELLI, Valentina CANNAVÒ, Andrea DI RENZONI,

Francesca FERRANTI, Maria Clara MARTINELLI, Annunziata OLLÀ , Gabriella TIGANO
Stromboli: gateway for early Mycenaean connections through the Strait of Messina 147

Dora CONSTANTINIDIS
Making connections: westward trade in purple dyed textiles 155

III. ITALY - ADRIATIC - AEGEAN

Marco BETTELLI, Michele CUPITÒ, Richard JONES, Giovanni LEONARDI, Sara Tiziana LEVI
The Po Plain, Adriatic and Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age: fact, fancy and plausibility 165

Paolo BELLINTANI, Federica GONZATO

Luxury production. Amber and glass during the Recent and Final Bronze Age in North-eastern Italy 173

Reinhard JUNG, Marco PACCIARELLI

Greece and Southern Italy 1250-1050 BC: manifold patterns of interaction 185

Francesco IACONO
The exception and the rule. Making sense of the diversity in patterns of Aegean interaction in Late Bronze Age
Central Mediterranean 205

Helena TOMAS
Early Bronze Age sailors of the Eastern Adriatic: the Cetina Culture and its impact 215

Petrika LERA, Stavros OIKONOMIDIS, Aris PAPAYIANNIS, Akis TSONOS

The ancestral message of the dead: tumuli, settlements, landscape and the utility of memory in the Prehistory
of Albania and Western Greece 223

Eleonora BALLAN
The decorated pottery of the Adriatic and Western Balkan Areas in the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC:
continuity, discontinuity and suggestion of dating 235

Salvatore VITALE, Nicholas G. BLACKWELL, Calla MCNAMEE

Kos, Italy, and Europe during the Mycenaean Period: evidence for a special connection 243

Louise A. HITCHCOCK, Aren M. MAEIR

Hesperos and Phosphoros: how research on Aegean-Eastern interactions can inform studies of the West
(presented at the Conference as a poster) 253

IV. BALKANS - AEGEAN

Shafi GASHI
Relations between the Mycenaean world and Kosovo, as reflected in imported vessels and weapons 263

Maja GORI
The Aegean seen from the North-west. Overcoming old interpretative frameworks in the field of Aegean-Balkan
relations 271
 CONTENTS v

Tobias KRAPF, Esmeralda AGOLLI, Ole Christian ASLAKSEN, Ekaterina ILIEVA, Stoyan IVANOV,
Christos KLEITSAS, Giannis PAPADIAS, Aleksandra PAPAZOVSKA SANEV, Evgenia TSAFOU,
Akis TSONOS, Evangelia VLIORA
Balkan Bronze Age borderland, along ancient routes from the Aegean to Albania, F.Y.R.O.M., Kosovo
and sw Bulgaria 279
(presented at the Conference as a poster)

Rovena KURTI
Carnelian and amber beads as evidence of Late Bronze Age contacts between the present territory of Albania
and the Aegean 287

Rudenc RUKA, Michael L. GALATY

The position of Albania in Mediterranean obsidian exchange spheres 299

Adem BUNGURI
Relations between the Mycenaean world and Albania during Middle and Late Helladic (as reflected from imported
Mycenaean weapons and tools) 305

Esmeralda AGOLLI
Models of social networks of southeast Albania in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (1200-900 BC) 319

Akis TSONOS
Albania meets the Aegean: the West Mainland Koine revisited 327

Aris PAPAYIANNIS
Animal husbandry in Albania, Epirus and Southern Greece during the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age:
questions of quantity, seasonality and integration to the economy and social structure 339

Tobias KRAPF
From Central Greece to the North and then Westwards? Tracing influences in matt painted pottery
from Middle Bronze Age to Early Iron Age 349

V. THE IONIAN

Garifalia METALLINOU
Corfu in the Adriatic network of contacts in the second half of the 3rd millennium B.C 363

Olympia VIKATOU
Meganissi Lefkada. A new site of the end of the Mycenaean era at the crossroads of the maritime routes
of the Ionian Sea 369

Gert Jan VAN WIJNGAARDEN, Nienke PIETERS

Between the Aegean and the Adriatic. Zakynthos in the Bronze Age 375

Christina SOUYOUDZOGLOU-HAYWOOD, Andreas SOTIRIOU, Eleni PAPAFLORATOU

Living on the edge. SW Kephalonia: an island region of the western Aegean world in the post-palatial period 383

VI. EPIRUS – WESTERN GREECE - PELOPONNESE

Konstantinos SOUEREF
Epirus and the Mycenaean World: versions and dimensions of immanentia 397

Christos N. KLEITSAS
Prehistoric Dodona, Epirus: towards the identification of a sacred place 401
vi CONTENTS

Paraskevi YIOUNI, Eleni VASILEIOU

Production and consumption of kylikes in Late Bronze/Early Iron Age mainland Epirus (Prefecture of Ioannina) 409

Thanasis J. PAPADOPOULOS
Mycenaean citadels of Western Greece: architecture, purpose and their intricate role in the local communities
and their relations with the West 419

Dimitris N. SAKKAS
The disturbed contexts of the Bronze Age lower Acheron valley. Assemblages and implications 431
(presented at the Conference as a poster)

Fotini SARANTI
Prehistoric Naupaktos: a missing link on the northern shore of the Corinthian Gulf 443
(presented at the Conference as a poster)

Lena PAPAZOGLOU-MANIOUDAKI, Constantinos PASCHALIDIS

A society of merchants and warriors to the east of the West. The case of the Mycenaean settlement
on Mygdalia hill, near Patras, in Achaea 453

Michalis GAZIS
Teichos Dymaion, Achaea. An acropolis-harbour of the Ionian Sea looking westwards 463

Elisabetta BORGNA
The Last Mycenaeans and the Adriatic connection: a view from the Trapeza cemetery, Eastern Achaea 473

Konstantina SOURA
Mycenaean Achaea towards the West: imported artefacts or technological know-how? The case of a casting mould
from Stavros, Chalandritsa 483

Erophile KOLIA, Andreas SPIROULIAS

Keryneia, Achaea. A recently excavated Bronze Age site in the northern Peloponnese. Aspects of cultural connections
with the West 497
(presented at the Conference as a poster)

Christina MARINI
The elephant in the room: migration and diffusion. Some thoughts on post-palatial Achaea 505
(presented at the Conference as a poster)

Kalliopi NIKITA, Georg NIGHTINGALE, Simon CHENERY

Mixed-alkali glass beads from Elateia-Alonaki: tracing the routes of an alien glass technology in the periphery
of post-palatial Mycenaean Greece 515

Brent DAVIS, Anne P. CHAPIN, Emilia BANOU, Louise A. HITCHCOCK

Like dolmen, like dromos: contextualizing the solar orientations of some Mycenaean tholoi 525

Lazaros KOLONAS, Kalliope SARRI, Christina MARGARITI, Ina VANDEN BERGHE,

Irene SKALS, Marie-Louise NOSCH
Heirs from the Loom? Funerary textiles from Stamna (Aitolia, Greece). A preliminary analysis 533

ENDNOTE

Gert Jan VAN WIJNGAARDEN

Closing remarks 545
 FROM SHEPHERDS TO HEROES:
MEDITERRANEAN ICONOGRAPHY OF POWER IN THE FAR WEST

1. Introduction
There are not many visible links between the Aegean and Iberia in the Early-Middle Bronze
Age. In the seventies, Schubart1 put forward that the Argaric pithos graves and the smooth polished
dark grey Argaric ware, might have been mimicking Minoan and Anatolian mortuary rituals and
Minyan ware respectively, and the faience beads from Fuente Alamo’s grave 9 could also be of
Mediterranean inspiration. Although Schubart’s point was very appealing, it lacked of a further
contextual and chronological support, proving connections between the Argar Culture and the
Eastern/Aegean Mediterranean.
The finding of what was interpreted as a horn of consecration at La Encantada, a Middle
Bronze Age site in La Mancha area of Central Iberia2 and the drawing of a second one from the
Argaric site of El Oficio, published by the brothers Siret3 in 1890 have also been used to claim
connections between Iberia and the Aegean in the mid-second millennium cal BC. Unfortunately,
neither of both archaeological contexts is very reliable. Exotics as ivory are no rare in Copper and
Bronze Age Iberian sites. Nevertheless, while raw ivory tusks of Asiatic elephant, among other ivory
types, are worked in Iberia during the Copper Age, all ivory found in Argaric Bronze Age sites and in
coeval La Mancha and Bronce Valenciano sites, belong either to African elephant and Elephas antiquus
fossil or to hippopotamus.4 Although hippo tusks are recorded in the Uluburum cargo,5 it is reasonable
to think that Africa better than Syria, might have been the source of the Iberian Bronze Age hippo
ivory.
On the other hand, Mederos6 contends the use of electrum on the rivets of a Middle/Late
Bronze Age Portuguese dagger, and its similarity with other Aegean MH III/LH I daggers to suggest
some links with the Aegean Bronze Age. Again, no other findings can help supporting an Aegean
connection with Iberia.
Of neither support was the great expectation produced by the finding of two Mycenaean sherds
in Montoro almost thirty years ago, followed by further discoveries, since they are among the only few
plain wheel made shards produced in unknown workshops that have been attested in LBA Southern
Iberia.7
Our view is that Iberia entered in the Eastern Mediterranean oikoumene only at the LBA (1250-
850 cal BC), a time when the Mediterranean values and ways of visually performing leadership began
to be adopted/adapted there, and when the use of weight systems denounces an embryonic

1 H. SCHUBART, “Relaciones mediterráneas de la Cultura de El Argar”, Zephyrus 26-27 (1976) 331-342.

2 J. L. SÁNCHEZ-MESEGUER and C. GALÁN, “Los cuernos de la consagración en el Cerro de La
Encantada: cronología de un símbolo”, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie I. Nueva época. Prehistoria y Arqueología 4
(2011) 141-152.
3 H. SIRET and L. SIRET, Las Primeras Edades del Metal en el Sudeste de España (1890).
4 Th.X. SCHUHMACHER, “Elfenbein des Chalkolithikums und der frühen Bronzezeit auf der Iberischen
Halbinsel”, in Elfenbein und Archäologie (2011) 91-122.
5 C. PULAK, “The Uluburum Shipwreck”, in R. HOLFELDER, S. SWINY and L. SWINY (eds), Res
Maritimae. Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean from Prehistory to Late Antiquity (1997) 233-26
6 A. MEDEROS, “La sepultura de Belmeque, (Beja, Bajo Alentejo). Contactos con el Egeo durante el
Bronce Final I del Suroeste de la Península Ibérica (1625-1425 AC)”, Veleia 26 (2009) 235-264.
7 J. C. MARTÍN DE LA CRUZ and M. PERLINES, “La cerámica a torno en los contextos culturales de
finales del II Milenio a.C. en Andalucía”, in Actas del IIº Congresso de Arqueologia Peninsular (1993) 335-349.
54 Marisa RUIZ-GÁLVEZ and Eduardo GALÁN

development of an abstract mind in there. These profound changes, better than the single and,
sometimes, controversial finding of exotics can help us to investigate the time when Iberia began to be
considered the Garden of the Hesperides.
2. The Southwest warrior stelae
The so-called warrior stelae were carved from a single stone block and represent weapons
together with other elements, usually highly schematised. Even though it is not easy to interpret the
meaning of the scenes depicted, their rich iconography is actually outstanding.
More than 130 stelae have been recorded since the end of the 19th century. They were originally
seen as tombstones, but the absence of a related context makes this interpretation improbable.
Furthermore, its chronology and interpretation remained contradictory for a time. Nowadays they are
understood in connection with their surrounding landscape, landmarks of political territories and their
critical resources, which were claimed by a group.8 Although the present authors do not deny a
funerary meaning, we are certain that the stelae were not connected with tombs, but functioned as the
celebration of a heroic ancestor, and the place for the cult and commemoration of a certain lineage.9
Stelae have traditionally been classified according to the presence/absence of human depictions,
together with certain items of local (Atlantic) or Mediterranean origin. The latter mainly consist in
elbow fibulae, mirrors, combs, horned helmets, lyres and two-wheel chariots. However, unlike the case
of most of the Atlantic weapons depicted (i.e. crested helmets, shields, swords, spearheads or bows and
arrows), which have material counterparts in the archaeological record, but for elbow fibulae, no
archaeological findings have yielded mirrors, chariots or the remaining Mediterranean objects
represented on the stelae (Pl. XIX).
The aniconic stelae, consisting of simple panoplies, have traditionally been regarded the earliest
ones, the heir of a tradition which goes back to the Copper and Early Bronze Ages. Nevertheless, the
weapons carved on them emulate the ones on the stelae with human depictions. Therefore it could be
assumed that all of them, either iconic or aniconic were broadly speaking, contemporary.
Nevertheless, the most typical warrior stelae focus on schematically pictured human depictions,
be them isolated, in pairs, or with smaller human depictions in their periphery. Although no indication
of sex is offered both, the context and weapons depicted, suggest they are males, with just a few
exceptions of female representations in the case the distinctive weaponry and Mediterranean male
emblems (i.e. chariots) were absent.
3. The political and ideological framework of the warrior stelae
According to the chronology of the Atlantic and Mediterranean objects depicted on them, the
chronology of the Southwest warrior stelae corresponds to the so-called post-palatial period, a time of
decentralized maritime trade in hands of petty leaders, sometimes described as basilei, in the context of
what we could describe as heterarchical societies. The collapse of the palace system freed craftsmen to
work on their own, contributing in that way to the expansion of new technologies and raw materials
previously related to the legitimating and enhancement of Kingship, to a new and wider audience in
the Eastern, Central, and Western Mediterranean.
In connection with it, the expansion of the pastoral tribes from the inner Syrian and
Transjordan steppes to the Mediterranean shores in the 11th century10 made the new petty rulers
emerging in the Eastern and Central Mediterranean at the Early Iron Age, familiar with new ways of
meat eating among male warrior pairs – the roasted meat – and also with the old Semite concept of
the Patrimonial Kingdom embodied in the Shepherd-King concept and its visual appearance, together

8 E. GALÁN, Estelas, paisaje y territorio en el Bronce Final del Suroeste de la Península Ibérica (1993).
9 M. RUIZ-GÁLVEZ and E. GALÁN, “Las estelas del Suroeste como hitos de vías ganaderas y rutas
comerciales”, Trabajos de Prehistoria 48 (1991) 257-273.
10 M. LIVERANI, “Stati ethnichi et città stati. Una tipologia storica per la Prima età del Ferro”, in M.
MOLINOS and A. ZIFFERERO (eds), Primi Popoli d’Europa (2002) 33-47.
 MEDITERRANEAN ICONOGRAPHY OF POWER IN THE FAR WEST 55

with the celebration of the Marzêah or banquet devoted to the invention/commemoration of an

heroic ancestor.11 It is then also, when the warrior’s ideology and male’s self-identity started to be
visually enhanced in Barbarian Europe.12
This visual enactment of the Eastern ruler’s facts and values, are, on our view, transferred at the
eve of the Phoenician colonialism, to the Tartessian hinterland, a pastoral area of acid soils, devoted in
the Prehistory, as still partly today, to pastoralism. We contend that the concept of the ruler as a
shepherd who cares for his people was not probably odd to them and became embodied to other local
(Atlantic) meaningful banners as were the weapons.
Among the latter, carp’s tongue type swords, spears and crested helmets, similar to those of the
Ría de Huelva and Vila Coba de Perrinho hoards, have good 14C dates around the 10th century cal
BC.13 Other swords that were very schematically depicted might belong to earlier leaf-shaped types of
around 12th to 11th centuries cal BC. Round and V notched shields are reliably dated in NW Europe
between 1250-950 cal BC.14
As for the Mediterranean objects carved on the stelae (Pl. XX), the chariot stands out by far
over the rest as the most complex depiction. More than 30 stelae show chariots, roughly one in every
four: so, as Hamilakis and Sherratt15 put forward: chariots were the ultimate in 2nd millennium status symbol.
Despite this iconographic exuberance, no true chariots or parts of them have been found up to the
present in the archaeological sites of LBA Iberia.
Putting all the chariot’s depictions together, many common traits are noticeable: all of them
have the same perspective and the same generic layout of the wagon and of the pair of harnessed
animals. Years ago, Quesada16 correlated these depictions with Aegean types of chariot studied by
Crouwel. Moreover, he showed the neat differences existing with other similar vehicles of the Near
East and Egypt. Nevertheless Quesada was unable to equate accurately the chariots of the SW stelae to
a specific type of Aegean chariot.
To have a clue, we have to look back to Early Iron Age Crete and Cyprus, where in scenes
portrayed not only on the Pyla-Kokkinokremos krater,17 but also in other examples of pictorial ware,

11 J.D. SCHLOEN, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol. Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East
(2001); J. GOODNICK WESTENHOLZ, “The good shepherd”, in A. PANAINO and A. PIRAS (eds),
Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project (2004) 281-316;
C. AMBOS and I. KRAUSKOPF, “The curved staff in the Ancient Near East as a predecessor of the
Etruscan lituus”, in L. BOURKE VAN DER MEER (ed.), Material aspects of Etruscan Religion (2010) 127-
153; M. RUIZ-GÁLVEZ and E. GALÁN, “A meal fit for a hero”, in M.E. AUBET and P. SUREDA
(eds), Interacción social y comercio en la antesala del colonialismo (2013) 43-69; A. GONZÁLEZ-RUIBAL and M.
RUIZ-GÁLVEZ, “House societies in the Ancient Mediterranean”, Journal of World Prehistory 29.4 (2016)
383-437.
12 P. TREHERNE, “The warrior’s beauty: The masculine body and self-Identity in Bronze Age Europe”,
Journal of European Archaeology 3.1 (1995) 105-114.
13 M. RUIZ-GÁLVEZ (ed.), Ritos de paso y puntos de paso: la Ría de Huelva en el mundo del Bronce Final Europeo
(1995); C. BOTTAINI and A. RODRIGUES, “O conjunto de metáis da Idade do Bronze de Vila Coba
de Perrinho (Vale da Cambra, Portugal Central) 50 anos após a sua descoberta”, Estrat Critic 5.3 (2011)
103-114.
14 M. UCKERMAN, “The function of Bronze Age shields”, in M. UCKERMAN and M. MÖDLINGER
(eds), Bronze Age warfare. Manufacture and use of weaponry (2011) 192-193.
15 Y. HAMILAKIS and S. SHERRATT, “Feasting and the consuming body in Bronze Age Crete and
Early Iron Age Cyprus”, in G. CADOGAN, M. IAKOVOU, K. KOPAKA and J. WHITLEY (eds),
Parallel lives: ancient island societies in Crete and Cyprus (2012) 200, footnote 113.
16 F. QUESADA, “Datos para una filiación egea de los carros grabados en las estelas del Suroeste”, in C.
DE LA CASA (ed.), Actas del V Congreso Internacional de Estelas funerarias, Vol 1 (1994) 72-77.
17 M. IACOVOU, “À contretemps. Late Helladic IIIC syntax and context of Early Iron Age pictorial
pottery in Cyprus”, in E. RYSTEDT and B. WELLS (eds), Pictorial Pursuits (2006) 191-203.
56 Marisa RUIZ-GÁLVEZ and Eduardo GALÁN

we find the models, as much for the chariots as for other scenes of our warrior stelae. Several authors18
have pointed out that in the 11th century BC, Cretan and Cypriot Protowhite Painted and White
Painted ware of the pictorial style, while evolving from Mycenaean shapes, were also indebted to a
Northern Syrian iconographic tradition evolving from 16th to the late 12th-early 11th centuries BC.
Even more, Yon19 suggested a Syrian origin for at least, the hunting and animal scenes on the Cypriot
pictorial style, which, according to Sherratt,20 depicts the basileus as a hero, performing male activities
as hunting, fighting or riding a horse. In that sense, these scenes could have had a funerary meaning,
as happened with the cremation urns of the Late Bronze Age Hama necropolis that depicts hunting
scenes.21
LH IIIA1-LH IIIC pictorial kraters portraying charioteers, wild animals, hunting scenes or a
tamer of beasts were in demand in Cyprus and the Levant. Van Wijngaarden22 stated that Mycenaean
pottery was selectively exported to the Levantine harbours, where kraters were used by an elite group
in graves or wealthy houses. Our point is that the pictorial LH IIIA1-LH IIIC pottery was used there
in the frame of the Marzeâh23 or Semitic banquet of celebration of a heroic ancestor or rpʼum.
The Ugaritic ritual text KTU11-30-32 refers to the autumn New Year festival, which celebrates
Baal victory over death. In KTU11-22, the rpʼum or ancestors are summoned to the god’s palace to
share the banquet with Baal. The rpʼum answer to the calling and attend the palace riding their chariots
or their horses.24 Wild animals, a common motive of the pictorial style, had probably a funerary
meaning too, connected to the netherworld as symbolic inversion of normal life and of chaos.
In that way, we can assume that it was the symbolism of the triumph over death what was
performed on the pictorial craters, and that this was the reason why they were in demand in LBA
Cyprus and the Levant. In fact, Steel25 stated that the LBA Pictorial Style craters were used in Cyprus
for the Marzeâh ceremonies. The same could be said of the Cretan and Cypriot Protowhite Painted
and White Painted ware of the pictorial style with scenes as the one of the lyre player on the kalathos
from Palaepathos-Xerolimn.26 Lyre player scenes are related by several authors27 with the introduction
of the Semite Marzêaḥ in Crete and Cyprus.
Precisely lyres are portrayed on the SW warrior stelae, although they are not very frequent as
just nine or even few cases are recorded. Moreover, they do not correspond to the Semitic type, which
is either thick with ten to thirteen strings, or thin with four to eight strings, but always with a flat base.
On the contrary, they recall the Aegean and Anatolian LBA lyres of round base and seven strings.28
Round base lyres were also known in Cyprus, where the number of strings were reduced from seven to

18 M. YON, “Sur une répresentation figurée chypriote”, BCH 94 (1970) 311-317; HAMILAKIS and
SHERRATT (supra n. 15); V. KARAGEORGHIS and E. RAPTOU, “Two new Proto-White Painted
ware vases of the pictorial style from Paleopaphos, Cyprus”, Opuscula 8, (2015) 81-98.
19 YON (supra n. 18).
20 HAMILAKIS and SHERRATT (supra n. 15) 201.
21 YON (supra n. 18) 93.
22 G.J. VAN WIJNGAARDEN, “An archaeological approach to the concept of value”, Archaeological
Dialogues 1.1 (1999) 2-46; G.J. VAN WIJNGAARDEN, Use and Appreciation of Mycenaean Pottery (2002).
23 K. SPRONK, Beatific afterlife in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (1986) 196-202.
24 SPRONK (supra n. 23)155-156 and 166.
25 L. STEEL, “The social impact of Mycenaean imported pottery in Cyprus”, BSA 93 (1998) 285-296.
26 KARAGEORGHIS and RAPTOU (supra n. 18)
27 J. CARTER, “Ancestor cult and the occasion of Homeric performance”, in J.B. CARTER and S.
MORRIS (eds), The Ages of Homer (1995) 285-312; J. CARTER, “Thiasos and Marzeah. Ancestor cult in
the Age of Homer”, in S. LANGDON (ed.), New Light on a Dark Age. Exploring the Culture of Geometric Greece
(1997) 72-112; HAMILAKIS and SHERRATT (supra n. 15)
28 B. LAWERGREN, “Distinctions among Canaanite, Philistine and Israelite lyres, and their global lyrical
contexts”, AJA 309 (1998) 41-67.
 MEDITERRANEAN ICONOGRAPHY OF POWER IN THE FAR WEST 57

three in the EIA.29 According to Franklin,30 the Iron Age round base Cypriot lyres are a hybrid
Aegean-local type. As the lyres depicted on the stelae show a variable number of strings, going from
nine or more (as the Luna stele), to nul (Zarza-Capilla III, Cabeza de Buey II and el Viso II stelae), we
are uncertain about whether they copy true models of which we have no archaeological findings, or
they only conveyed the idea and the context in which a lyre player could have played it: the Marzeâh31
banquet. Scenes as those depicted on the pictorial Cretan and Cypriot Protowhite Painted and White
Painted ware or on other kind of medium (textiles, wood, metal, ivories…) might have been the way by
which, the Iberian elite would have become acquainted with new strategies of enhancing the power.
Nevertheless we have to admit, that we lack of any kind of archaeological findings supporting this.
Linked to the male aesthetics are combs and mirrors, which appear also on the stelae. More
specifically, combs are depicted on 20 stelae. They are always rectangular or semi-circular in shape
and they apparently lack of decoration and differ from LBA Aegean and Levantine combs, which are
square-shaped and sometimes, profusely decorated.32 Contrary to what is the usual keynote, we do
have at least two archeological counterparts for these combs. The first one is a rectangular, non-
decorated ivory comb, that comes from the chamber tomb of Roça do Casal do Meio in Portugal,
dated by two bones samples around the 10th century cal BC.33 A second ivory comb, in this case
decorated with incised concentric rings, comes from the Portuguese site of Cabeço de Vaiamonte,34
whose context and chronology are, unfortunately uncertain. Its decoration is similar to other combs of
the Central and Eastern Mediterranean as Frattesina, Torre Mordillo, Madonna del Piano in Italy,
Enkomi in Cyprus, Knossos North grave 201 in Crete35 and Perati cemetery (Greece), all of them of
post palatial chronology. Anyhow, their closest counterpart are rectangular combs of Frattesina Le
Narde, Marcita and Plemyrion in the Central Mediterranean.36
Combs in male graves refer to the male beauty, and to the hair, but specially beard care, as part
of the visual image of gods and kings in the Semitic world. In other words, as embodiment of the
Shepherd-King’s concept.37
Around forty mirrors, usually very schematically depicted, are also featured on the warrior
stelae. Nevertheless, we can distinguish two types of them. The first one is round or slightly oval with a
straight handle and the second has an openwork handle. While the first one belongs broadly speaking
to Cypriots models or to their Central Mediterranean versions, openwork handles, as depicted on
Orellana, Magacela, Cabeza de Buey III o Capilla IV stelae,38 correspond to Sardinian mirrors.39 As
usual, we lack of physical counterparts for both of them in the archaeological record.

29 M. MIKRAKIS, “The destruction of the Mycenaean palaces and the construction of the epic world.
Performatives perspectives”, in J. DRIESSEN (ed.), Destruction. Archaeological, philological and historical
perspectives (2013) 221-242.
30 J.C. FRANKLIN, “East faces of Early Greek music”, Society for Classical Studies 146th Annual Meeting (2015).
31 RUIZ-GÁLVEZ and GALÁN (supra n. 11).
32 M. FELDMAN, “Hoarded treasures: The Megiddo ivories and the End of the Bronze Age”, Levant 41.2
(2009) 175-194; J.L. MELENA (ed.), El Mundo Micénico (1992).
33 R. VILAÇA and E. CUNHA, “A Roça do Casal do Meio, (Calhariz, Sesimbra). Novos contributos”, Al-
Madan, Segunda Serie 13 (2005) 48-57.
34 M.. GOMES, “O Oriente no Occidente. Testemunhos iconográficos na protohistória do Sul de Portugal.
Smiting gods”, Estudos Orientais 1 (1990) 53-106.
35 H. CATLING, “Heroes returned? Subminoan burials from Crete”, in CARTER and MORRIS (eds)
(supra n. 27) 126-132.
36 M. BETTELLI and I. DAMIANI, “Aspetti della lavorazione e circolazione dell’avorio nel Mediterraneo
nell’età del bronzo”, in L. VAGNETTI, M. BETELLI and I. DAMIANI (eds), L’avorio in Italia nell Età dell
Bronzo (2005) 17-26, fig. 1A.
37 M. RUIZ-GÁLVEZ, “Peripheral, but not that much...”, in S.O. JORGE (ed.), Existe uma Idade do Bronze
Atlântico? (1998) 101-113; RUIZ-GÁLVEZ and GALÁN (supra n. 11).
38 GALÁN (supra n. 8); S. CELESTINO, Estelas de guerrero y estelas diademadas. precolonización y formación del
mundo tartésico (2001); M.A. DE BLAS, “Una estela de guerrero del Bronce Final precolonial de Orellana
(Badajoz), hoy en el Palacio de Meres (Siero, Asturias)”, Veleia 27 (2010) 23-42.
58 Marisa RUIZ-GÁLVEZ and Eduardo GALÁN

As for the helmets, two types of them are worn by males depicted on the stelae. Either the
crested helmet of which, as explained above, we have two counterparts in Iberian hoards of the 10th
century cal BC. or the horned helmet, of which we lack of actual equivalents.
Horns are the symbol of divinity in the Semitic world. According to Cornelius,40 Baal, but not
Reshef wears a horned crown. Baal-Rapu is a savoir and a healer and so are the rpʼum, the heroic
ancestors in Ugarit.41
Horned figures can be traced along the Mediterranean, from Syria up to Iberia. Up to what
point, whether they refer to a Baal or to a local heroic ancestor, is a question we cannot answer.
Anyhow, SW Iberia as Sardinia, were then areas mainly devoted to grazing. Pastoral societies are
traditionally aggressive and warfare is endemic in many of them. It is not unlikely in this framework
that rights over critical resources were claimed alleging the descent of a heroic ancestor.42 In that way
the Semitic Marzeâh and the ideology of divine or semi-divine ancestors might have rung a bell to the
SW Iberian populations.
This idea of a heroic ancestor could be exemplified in the complex scene of the Ategua stele (see
Pl. XIX, 11). There, a central male figure wearing what have been interpreted as an armour and a
crested helmet is surrounded by his weapons, cosmetic tools – comb and mirror – and three dogs.
Beneath him, another smaller figure, also wearing an armour, is lying down. Admitting that the
cosmetic tools refer to the visual appearance of the Shepherd-King and the dogs to the hunting as
male and heroic leisure, then we could read the scene as made of two consecutive acts devoted to the
death (below) and heroization (above), whose main character is the armoured male. In fact, years ago,
Bendala43 based on the presence on the lower side of the stele of a chariot and some small characters
parading, holding hands, interpreted the scene as the performance of a prothesis.
4. Putting the puzzle pieces together
Almost fifteen years ago, the first square or prismatic, lead and bronze weights were discovered
in LBA Iberian hillforts. Since them many other sites, including Huelva, followed suit.44 Except for
Huelva, weights are found together with a local LBA culture and in contexts of roughly late 11th/10th
century cal BC with no Phoenician or other Mediterranean imports, but just a few iron tools. The
system of weight to which all of them belong is the standard of 9.4 g, a very old Mediterranean system

39 F. LO SCHIAVO, H. MACNAMARA and L. VAGNETTI, “Late Cypriot imports to Italy and their
influence on local metalwork”. BSR 53 (1985) 1-71 fig. 11; F. LO SCHIAVO, Bronzi e Bronzetti del Museo
“G. A. Sanna” di Sassari (2000), 84.
40 I. CORNELIUS, The iconography of the Canaanite gods Resehf and Ba‛al. Late Bronze Age and Iron periods (1500-
1000 BCE) (1994).
41 SPRONK (supra n. 23) 180 and 270; P. XELLA, “Una cuestión de vida o muerte: Baal de Ugarit y los
dioses fenicios”, in Actas del II Congreso Internacional del Mundo Púnico (2000) 37; G. DEL OLMO, “Del
palacio de Baal a la Jerusalén celestial: de lo primordial a lo definitivo. Arquitectura celestial en el Levante
Antiguo”, in P. AZARA, J. CARRUESCO, F. FRONTISI-DUCROUX and G. LURI (eds), Arquitectures
Celestials (2011) 37-43.
42 R. THAPAR, “Death and the hero”, in Mortality and Immortality: the anthropology and archaeology of death (1981)
293-315; M. MAHDI, Pasteurs de l’Atlas. Production pastorale, droit et rituel (1999); Z. KALHORO, “Memorial
stones of Sindh, Pakistan: Typology and iconography”, Puralokbarta vol. 1 (2008) 285-298.
43 M. BENDALA, “Notas sobre las estelas decoradas del Suroeste y los orígenes de Tartessos”, Habis 8
(1977) 177-205.
44 R. VILAÇA, “Acerca da existência de ponderais em contextos do Bronze Final/Ferro Inicial no territorio
portugués”, O Arqueólogo Português, Serie IV, 21 (2003) 245-288; F. GONZÁLEZ DE CANALES, L.
SERRANO and J. LLOMPART, El emporio fenicio precolonial de Huelva (2004); R. VILAÇA, “Ponderais do
Bronze Final-Ferro Inicial do Occidente Peninsular: Novos dados e questôesemaberto”, in M.P.
GARCÍA-BELLIDO, L. CALLEGARIN and A. JIMÉNEZ (eds), Barter, Money and Coinage in
theAncientMediterranean (10th-1st centuries BC) (2011) 139-167.
 MEDITERRANEAN ICONOGRAPHY OF POWER IN THE FAR WEST 59

to which the Egyptian qdt and of the Syrian shekel belong.45 Despite the fact that this system of weight,
as several others, has been documented in Late Iron Age Tyre,46 it is not a specifically Phoenician
system of weight as it is on the contrary, the Phoenician shekel of 7.5/7.9 gr. This last standard fit
better with the weights of the Phoenician factory of Cerro de El Villar and the Orientalising palace of
Cancho Roano.47
Thereby, we have some unspecific Mediterranean traders based in Huelva some time before the
Phoenician colonization of Iberia. They could have been Oriental, perhaps Phoenicians, although not
necessarily Tyrians or not only Phoenicians, because the iconography of the stelae remits us mainly to
Cyprus. Not only Cyprus resumed very early its contacts with the Levant, as attested by the great
amount of Cypriot ceramics in many EIA Levantine harbours, but also with Crete, as proved by the
similarities between the Early Iron Age North Syrian, Cretan and Cypriot pictorial pottery.48 They
also went on frequenting the Central Mediterranean,49 at least at the EAI.
Whoever they were, and despite the fact that excepting for the Huelva karum, there are no other
foreign port of trade or colonies before the late 9th century cal BC, they necessarily had to settle on an
individual basis among the local population. Otherwise it is difficult to understand the adoption by
locals of a standard of weight for their transactions with foreign merchants. As Goody50 explained,
complex mental calculations are difficult for illiterate people. Therefore they had to have a close
contact with foreigners to acquire these competences. Using the term coined by Curtin,51 are we
talking of a trade diaspora or in Stein’s52 definition, a colonialism without colonies?
Last but not least, important are the consequences of the introduction of a standard of weights
among oral populations, in the sense that it promoted abstract thinking and self-awareness among
those making calculations. Perhaps the iconography of the SW warrior stelae mirrors those profound
changes taking place at the eve of the Phoenician colonization.

Marisa RUIZ-GÁLVEZ
Eduardo GALÁN

45 N. PARISE, “Per uno studio del sistema ponderaleugaritico”, Dialoghi di Archeologia 4-5 (1970-1971) 3-36.
E. GALÁN and M. RUIZ-GÁLVEZ, “Writing, ciphers, self-consciousness and private trade at the eve of
the Phoenician colonization”, in A.M. ARRUDA (ed.), Fenícios e Púnicos, per terra e mar, Vol. I (2013b) 380-
389.
46 J. ELAYI and A.G. ELAYI, Recherche sur les poids Phéniciens (1997).
47 M.E. AUBET, “Notas sobre tres pesas fenicias descubiertas en el Cerro del Villar (Málaga)”, in M.G.
AMADASI GUZZO, M. LIVERANI and P. MATTHIAE (eds), Da Pyrgi a Mozia: studi sull' archeologia del
Mediterraneo in memoria di Antonia Ciasca (2002) 29-40. M.P. GARCÍA Y BELLIDO, “Roma y los sistemas
monetarios provinciales. Monedas romanas acuñadas en España en la Segunda Guerra Púnica”, Zephyrus
53-54 (2001-2002) 551-577.
48 YON (supra n. 18); IACOVOU (supra n. 17); N. KOUROU, “The Aegean and the Levant in the Early
Iron Age. Recent developments”, Baal Hors-Série VI (2008) 361-374; HAMILAKIS and SHERRATT
(supra n. 15); KARAGEORGHIS and RAPTOU (supra n. 18)
49 F. LO SCHIAVO, “Cyprus and Sardinia in the Mediterranean trade routes towards the West”, in V.
KARAGEORGHIS and D. MICHAELIDES (eds), Cyprus and the Sea (1995) 45-60; F. LO SCHIAVO,
“Late Cypriot Bronzework and Bronzeworkers in Sardinia, Italy and elsewhere in the West”, in L.
BONFANTE and V. KARAGEORGHIS (eds), Italy and Cyprus in Antiquity: 1500-450 BC (2001) 131-152;
F. LO SCHIAVO, “La metallurgia sarda: relazioni fra Cipro, Italia e la Peninsola Iberica. Un modello
interpretativo”, in S. CELESTINO, N. RAFEL and X.-L. ARMADA (eds), Contacto cultural entre el
Mediterraneo y el Atlántico. (siglos XII-VIII ane). La precolonización a debate (2008) 417-436.
50 J. GOODY, La lógica de la escritura y la organización de la sociedad (1990).
51 Ph. D. CURTIN, Cross-cultural trade in World History (1984).
52 G. STEIN, “Colonies without colonialism: A trade diaspora model of fourth millennium B.C.
Mesopotamian enclaves in Anatolia”, in C. LYONS and J. PAPADOPOULOS (eds), The Archaeology of
Colonialism (2002) 26-64.
60 Marisa RUIZ-GÁLVEZ and Eduardo GALÁN

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Pl. XIX Sample of Southwestern stelae with Mediterranean items: 1. Brozas, 2. Torrejón el Rubio I, 3.
Torrejón el Rubio II, 4. Luna, 5. Magacela, 6. El Viso I, 7. Zarza de Montánchez, 8. Alamillo, 9.
Herrera del Duque, 10. Cabeza del Buey, 11. Ategua (1-4 and 7-9 after CELESTINO [supra n. 38]
329, 331, 338, 347, 392, 394, 406 and 453; 5 after M. ALMAGRO, Las estelas decoradas del suroeste
peninsular [1966] 79, fig. 24; 10 after C. DOMINGUEZ DE LA CONCHA and J.M. GONZALEZ
BORNAY, Catálogo de las Estelas decoradas del Museo Arqueológico de Provincial de Badajoz. Siglos VIII-V a.C.
[2005] 52; 11 after M. ALMAGRO, “Nuevas estelas decoradas de la Península Ibérica”, Miscelánea
Arqueológica 25 [1974] fig. 2).
Pl. XX 1. Fuente de Cantos Stele, 2. Mirrors, 3. Horned human representations, 4. Chariots, 5. Combs, 6.
Lyres, 7. Chariots at a Mycenaean amphora from Pyla-Verghi, 8. Lyre player from Kouklia, 9.
Horned God from Enkomi (1 after M. ALMAGRO, Las estelas decoradas del suroeste peninsular [1966]
123, fig. 42; 2-6 after R. J. HARRISON, Symbols and Warriors. Images of the European Bronze Age [2004]
fig. 7.13, 7.15, 7.16, 7.18 and 7.21; 7 and 9 after P. DIKAIOS, Enkomi: excavations 1948-58 [1969] vol.
II, pl. 301 and IIIa, pl. 140; 8 after V. KARAGEORGHIS and J. DES GAGNIERS, La céramique
Chypriote de style figuré. Âge du Fer (1050-500 av. J.-C.). Illustrations et descriptions des vases [1974] 2 [detail]).
XIX
XX