European Kingdoms

Cogotas I Culture (Bronze Age) (Iberia)
c.2000 - 1100 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 Cogotas I culture in western-central Iberia is named for the fortified type site of Las Cogotas, which is located in the municipality of Cardeñosa in Spain's Ávila province. Located on a hill, the site has given rise to a stratigraphic sequence which archaeology has been able to divide into two broad periods with a hiatus in between them.

The oldest levels (or deepest) are typical of the late Bronze Age, forming Cogotas I, while the youngest (or shallowest) are typical of the Iberian Iron Age, forming Cogotas II. Investigations into the Las Cogotas site have made it possible to build a more accurate picture of life in the peninsula prior to the Roman invasion.

The site was excavated by Juan Cabré in the 1920s and is the main reference for the Vettones, a people with a proto-Celtic culture who formed the Cogotas II culture. The Cogotas I period, though, is less well understood, having emerged in part from the fading of the Campaniform Chalcolithic. This culture extended over the Spanish Duero/Douro basin, the upper half of the River Ebro, and into the Spanish Tagus basin.

The people of Cogotas I produced black ceramics with a variety of decorative forms: incised geometric motifs, incised-printed geometric motifs which are also referred to as 'dot and line' or zipper motifs (Cerámica de Boquique in Spanish), and excised geometric motifs with or without inlays of white or red paste. Vessels were relatively small, flat-based, conic, rough, and supposedly used as kitchenware.

Archaeological finds are constantly being made, and archaeological cultures are frequently being updated with new information. Get in touch here if this page also requires updating.

(Information by Trish Wilson & Peter Kessler, with additional information by Edward Dawson, 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 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.2200 - 2000 BC

Bell Beaker culture gradually fades in mainland Europe as it is replaced by successor cultures. Largely this is via the Unetice in Central Europe, the Atlantic Bronze Age in the west (from about 1300 BC), the Terramare culture in Italy, the Wessex culture in Britain, the Armorican Tumulus culture, and the Argaric, Cogotas I, and Levantine Bronze in Iberia.

Once the Cogotas I culture had spread far and wide across central-northern Iberia, its later vessels feaured stab-and-drag decorations like these

This earliest phase of Cogotas I is labelled 'Proto-Cogotas I' (2000-1700 BC), with the earliest finds being dated to 2034 BC, from El Portalón de Atapuerca in the upper Ebro valley. This area is not normally considered to be the culture's cradle of origin on the northern plateau.

From there the culture extends within a century to reach the lower Douro valley, exhibiting new ceramic forms as it does so. This influence is due to the earliest arrivals of Indo-European 'elements' which have come with the recent influx of Bell Beaker culture.

c.1700 BC

The second phase of the Cogotas I culture is 'Initial Cogotas I' (1700-1550 BC). This involves the settlement of the northern plateau. The culture has extended into the Duero, Tajo, and upper Ebro valleys (at sites such as Los Tolmos, Arevalillo, La Plaza, El Cogote, La Corvera, and La Venta), although it remains somewhat penned in by the Argaric. It is this distribution which appears to confirm an origin in the northern plateau.

Bronze technology in Iberia was championed by the Los Millares civilisation of the Mediterranean south coast, but it was later cultures which progressed to cover much of the peninsula (click or tap on map to view full sized)

c.1550 BC

The third Cogotas I phase is 'Middle Cogotas I' (1550-1350 BC). This involves expansion across the entire plateau and into the southern valleys. The decorative repertoire for pottery is further enriched by the appearance of exquisite ceramics and a new decorative model which would appear to be a response to the arrival of a second wave of Indo-European elements.

Weakening for the past century and-a-half, Iberia's Valencian Bronze terminates here, as does the Argaric culture in favour of a Post-Argaric period. Perhaps not coincidentally this is at the same time as Babylonia in the Near East experiences a short dark age, while the new Indo-European arrivals may also have been destabilised by a shift in climate.

Once again an exquisite array of ceramics appear in the Ebro valley and then on the central plateau which is known as La Meseta (at about 1550 BC in Moncín, and 1466 BC in Los Tolmos).

A double pit burial, comprising the remains of a young woman, with the feet absent (the central burial in this photo), and the partial remains of an adolescent (lower in the photo), from Cerro de la Cabeza (Avila), with the female wearing two bronze bracelets (to the right of the remains), and with the ensemble being a one-off instance of personal furnishings within a late Cogotas I mortuary context

The same ceramics also appear outside the northern sub-plateau to enter the south-east from about 1550 BC, at Gatas in Almería and Cuesta del Negro in Granada. From 1350 BC they also appear in the middle valley of the Guadalquivir (at Llanete de los Moros).

c.1350 BC

The final Cogotas I phase is appropriately entitled 'Final' (1350-1100 BC). This sees the culture contract into its area of origin along the valleys of the Douro, Tagus, and upper Ebro. Presumably it is being pushed inwards by Indo-European arrivals into the region who will come to form the Vettones tribe.

c.1250 - 1100 BC

One of the earliest proto-Celtic cultures has started to appear in Central Europe, this being the late Bronze Age Urnfield. This replaces the preceding Tumulus culture before spreading far and wide.

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)

Some Q-Celtic-speaking proto-Celtic groups of this culture apparently end up in Britain, while others enter north-eastern Iberia to provide some of the earliest proto-Celtic Indo-European elements there after the initial influx of Bell Beaker folk. The Levantine Bronze for one is greatly influenced by this in its own later phase.

It serves as an intercommunicating network between the various other Iberian Bronze Age cultures, while also picking up a degree of influence from the neighbouring Cogotas I culture through the same channels.