Forging communities: coalitions, identity symbols and ritual practices in Iron Age Eastern Iberia

Mira, Ignasi Grau

doi:10.1080/00438243.2015.1086671

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…The mountain is 1040 m above sea level; it stands out from the surrounding territory and visually dominates a large number of the villages in the area (Figure 1). Its visual presence was doubtless a decisive factor in choosing the site of the town and the Iberian sanctuary, which would have played a fundamental role in the social integration of the Iberian populations through religious ties, as previous archaeological studies have proposed (Grau Mira, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The link between the towns and villages and the worship site is thus demonstrated and can be related to the need to create kinship ties between the local populations in order to build a sense of community (Grau Mira, 2016).…”

Section: Evaluation Of the Geographical Influence Of La Serreta Sanctmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This collection was found extremely fragmented and dispersed in the archaeological strata of the sanctuary excavated in the 1920s on the summit of La Serreta Mountain, near the large Iberian town at the same site (Visedo, 1922a, 1922b, Olcina et al, 1998Grau Mira, 2002;2016). The mountain is 1040 m above sea level; it stands out from the surrounding territory and visually dominates a large number of the villages in the area (Figure 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing the territorial influence of an Iberian worship site. The chemical characterisation of the terracotta from the Iron Age sanctuary of La Serreta

Mira

Gallello

2017

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

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This paper presents the study of the prestigious terracotta votive figurines from the Iberian Iron Age sanctuary of La Serreta (Alicante province, Spain) composed of 174 items. Portable X-ray fluorescence (PXRF) was used to identify elemental markers that permit us to observe the differences between local and non-local terracotta figurines and furthermore to evaluate the geographical influence of the La Serreta sanctuary using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (PLSDA) statistical method was also used to classify the figurines of uncertain geographical origin. The resulting groups were related to typological and stylistic groups of figurines and the distribution in different sites in the region.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Evaluation Of the Geographical Influence Of La Serreta Sanctmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing the territorial influence of an Iberian worship site. The chemical characterisation of the terracotta from the Iron Age sanctuary of La Serreta

Mira

Gallello

2017

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

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“…Perspectives include: overviews or collected works aiming to focus the theme(s) (Insoll 2004(Insoll , 2011Kyriakidis 2007, Rowan 2012Whitley and Hays-Gilpin 2008), studies of religious change (Graham et al 2013;Shaw 2013a,b); ritual and religion as a source of power or social strategies (Adams 2004;Grau Mira 2016;Janusek 2006;Kovacevich 2007), material expression of religion (Droogan 2013;Fogelin and Schiffer 2015;Wells 2006), the process of ritualization (Bradley 2005;Humphry and Laidlaw 2007) and of course the intersection of ritual and production (Austin 2015;Hruby 2007;Inomata 2001;Spielmann 2002;Wright and Loveland 2015).…”

Section: Ritual and Religion In Archaeologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Prestige: A Ritual Production Model for Stone Tool Specialization in Naqada Period Egypt

Skarzynski¹

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This dissertation looks at the organization and development of specialized production in 4th millennium BCE Egypt. At the outset of this period northeastern Africa was occupied by small-scale groups of pastoralists and early agriculturalists. By the close of the 4th millennium BC, the Nile Valley was one of the earliest instances of a society with centralized political organization, extensive labor division, and institutionalized inequalities.This research brings data on stone tools and settlement sites to bear on competing models of specialization. Many models of specialized production have focused either on the production of symbolically meaningful goods for the elite, or the production of utilitarian goods for the masses; they have not considered the production of symbolically meaningful goods for commoners. In Egypt the prevailing theory for the development of specialized production is a prestige-goods model, where elites sponsored the production of items used to display status and which were not available to all. However, this model does not account for all specialized production. A review of the evidence for specialization in Egypt shows that some items made by specialists were quite widely used (e.g., lithic blades, black-topped red ware ceramics), and so do not fit a prestige-goods model. To explore how the production of various stone tools was organized and developed, a model of ritual production outlined by Spielmann (2002) was considered. This model recognizes that people have often increased their economic production in order to make items needed for ritual activities, such as life cycle events (e.g., birth, marriage, death) and community-encompassing rituals. These ritual activities involved many members of society, not a restricted subset. Expectations were developed for archaeological patterns of raw material choice, production locations, and find contexts that should be observed if the ritual production model can account for the development of some aspects of specialized production in -ivEgypt. These expectations were evaluated based on examination of lithic artifact collections from the settlement sites of el-Mahâsna, Abydos, and Nag el-Qarmila, and comparison to published data from other sites and online museum databases. This research showed that there were many different ways that stone tool production was organized at the intra-site and regional levels. Some of stone tools-early fishtail knives, axes, large-blade knives, and microendscrapers-fit the ritual production model for the development of specialized production quite well. Preferences for certain raw materials were evident, and these preferences could not be accounted for by functional considerations or access to local resources. Instead, the raw material choices probably related to the symbolic significance of their colors, which can be traced from the Pharaonic back to the Predynastic periods. These tools were produced in conjunction with ritual activity areas, and the tools themselves were found in ritually significant cont...

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Power on the hills. Warfare, symbolic violence and landscape in the eastern Iberian Iron Age

Mira

2019

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the fortified landscape as a symbolic context for the development of political processes, using the Iberian Iron Age landscape of the Valley of Alcoi as a case study. The development of fortified urban settlements reflects the importance of warfare in this period in which a warrior group accessed power and ruled Iberian society. An analysis of the spatial relationships between fortified settlements and their dependent villages through GIS analysis of visual structure is carried out. We interpret this spatial structure in terms of the ideological discourses that gave shape to the social relations inscribed in the landscape. Funerary rituals show the emergence and relevance of warrior rulers in this historical context.

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Forging communities: coalitions, identity symbols and ritual practices in Iron Age Eastern Iberia

Cited by 7 publications

References 10 publications

Assessing the territorial influence of an Iberian worship site. The chemical characterisation of the terracotta from the Iron Age sanctuary of La Serreta

Assessing the territorial influence of an Iberian worship site. The chemical characterisation of the terracotta from the Iron Age sanctuary of La Serreta

Beyond Prestige: A Ritual Production Model for Stone Tool Specialization in Naqada Period Egypt

Power on the hills. Warfare, symbolic violence and landscape in the eastern Iberian Iron Age

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