European Kingdoms

Asturian-Cantabrian Bronze (Bronze Age) (Iberia)
c.1500 - 900 BC

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The system which has evolved to catalogue the various archaeological expressions of human progress is one which involves cultures. The task of cataloguing the vast range of human cultures which emerged from Africa and the Near East right up until human expansion reached the Americas is covered in the related feature (see link, right).

Early Iberia formed the south-western peninsula of Europe and comprises the modern countries of Portugal and Spain, plus the principality of Andorra and the British crown colony of Gibraltar. The peninsula's role in human development played a notable role in the first millennium BC, even before the coming of imperial ambitions which reached its southern and eastern shores.

The three thousand year-old Iberian Neolithic experienced some difficulties towards the end of the fourth millennium BC, seemingly as part of a wider climate-related transition which also affected Sumer. The early Chalcolithic (Copper Age) became dominant, leading directly into the Iberian Bronze Age around 2800 BC.

The Asturian-Cantabrian Bronze in Iberia was located along the northern Atlantic coast. A rough border can be drawn for it from the River Nuvia between Lugo and Oviedo in the west and the Ajo promontory region to the east of Santander, and then stretching southwards perhaps to an uneven line between Vitoria-Gasteiz and Zamora, along the border with the Cogotas I culture, before meeting the territory of the Galician Bronze to its west.

Together, both are part of a recent archaeological concept of a North-Western Iberian Bronze. This only began to flourish once the colder, drier spell which overtook the last few centuries of the third millennium BC had faded in the first century or so of the second millennium BC to leave conditions warmer and more humid.

Copper metallurgy, which had begun to appear at the end of the Neolithic, became consolidated across Iberia from the eighteenth century BC, at the height of the Bronze Age in Iberia. By this time a number of regional cultures or groups had also become consolidated across the peninsula.

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(Information by Trish Wilson & Peter Kessler, with additional information by Edward Dawson, from Ceremonial spaces from Late Bronze Age to Roman in Cantabrian hillforts, Angel Villa Valdes, from De aldea fortificada a Caput Civitatis?, Angel Villa Valdes (in Spanish), from A Provenance Study of Early Bronze Age Artefacts Found in Asturias (Spain), A Reguera-Galan, T Barreiro-Grille, M Moldovan, L Lobo, M Á de Blas Cortina, & J I García Alonso, from Settlements and Houses in Galicia in the Middle and Late Bronze Age, M Pilar Prieto-Martinez & Mikel Diaz-Rodriguez, from Portuguese Castros - The Evolution of the Habitat and Proto-Urbanization Process, Armando Coelho Ferreira da Silva, from Mycenaean Contacts with the Iberian Peinsular during the Late Bronze Age, Alfredo Mederos Martin, from The horse in the Iberian peninsula, Arre Caballo, from The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, David W Anthony, from The Archaeology of Bronze Age Iberia, Gonzalo Aranda Jiménez, Sandra Montón-Subías, & Margarita Sánchez Romero (Routledge, 2019), from Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Departamento de Prehistoria, Trabajos de Prehistoria, Vols 26-51, in Spanish), from Amigos del museo arqueológico de Lorca, Salvador Fontela, Juan Antonio Gómez, & Miguel Miras (2004), from Atlantic Seaways, Barry Cunliffe, from Iberia, the Atlantic Bronze Age and the Mediterranean, Brendan O'Connor, from Bronze Age Iberia, Vicente Lull, Rafael Mico, Cristina Rihuete Herrada, & Roberto Risch, from First Bronzes of NW Iberia - The Data from the Fraga dos Corvos Habitat Site, Joao Carlos Senna-Martinez, Elsa Luís, Maria Fátima Araújo, Pedro Valério, from Contacto cultural entre el Mediterráneo y el Atlántico (siglos XII-VIII ane), S Celestino, N Rafel, & X-L Armada (Eds, Consejo superior de Investigaciones Cientificas Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología en Roma, in Spanish), from Vida y muerte de una espada atlántica del Bronce Final en Europa: Reconstrucción de los procesos de fabricación, uso y destrucción, Bénédicte Quilliec (in Spanish), from Les ors de l'Europe atlantique à l'âge du bronze, Barbara Regine Armbruster (in French), and from External Links: The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe (Nature), and Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa (in Spanish), and Celtiberia.net (in Spanish), and Lista de pueblos prerromanos de Iberia (in Spanish, Hispanoteca.eu), and Euskomedia (in Spanish).)

c.1500 BC

The Asturian-Cantabrian Bronze emerges in the middle Iberian Bronze Age and within the archaeological concept of a wider North-Western Iberian Bronze. It is located along Iberia's northern Atlantic coast. This is around the same time as the Argaric culture in south-eastern Iberia is fading into the Post-Argaric during an Argaric B period.

The idol of Peña Tú, tattooed forever into a great chunk of rock which has provoked local religious feeling since it was created in Bronze Age Asturias

The neighbouring Galician Bronze emerges around the same time, as do the more distant Western Andalusian Bronze and the western-central Western Bronze.

c.1300 BC

The Atlantic Bronze Age begins to form along the Atlantic coast of France, specifically between Brittany and Gironde. It quickly expands northwards and also south into Iberia. The name is an umbrella term for a series of metalworking industries (or 'traditions').

Dates are somewhat movable, with a start of about 1300 BC or 1000 BC being offered, and a concluding date of about 700 BC or 500 BC. It quickly reaches southern early Britain to its north and the Iberian Bronze Age to its south. In the latter it encompasses Asturian-Cantabrian Bronze, the Galician Bronze, the Western Bronze, the Vila Nova de Sao Pedro, and the Western Andalusian Bronze.

By around 1300 BC various changes had taken place in Iberia, with the Argaric culture having collapsed and others having experienced problems, including the Levantine Bronze, leaving the way clear for the emergence of a fresh wave of cultural zones (click or tap on map to view full sized)

It also succeeds the European Bell Beaker culture, the Bell Beaker and Wessex culture in Britain, and the Armorican Tumulus culture in what is now north-western France.

c.1000 BC

The village of El Chao Samartín castro in Grandas de Salime (Asturias) is founded around now, with its first defences appearing very soon after. These are in the form of a ditch and a palisade surrounding a sacred enclosure, with an entrance which is presided over by large rocks and with a very large building (for the time) being located behind it.

The village is converted around 800 BC into a castro, as part of the Castro cultural phenomenon which replaces the Asturian-Cantabrian Bronze. It survives until an earthquake destroys it in the second century AD.

Castro de Viladonga is located about twenty kilometres to the north-east of Lugo on the main road to Viladonga, with the surviving earthworks representing a Romanised version of an Iberian castro settlement