European Kingdoms

North-Western Iberian Bronze (Chalcolithic / Bronze Age) (Iberia)
c.2200 - 600 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 North-Western Iberian Bronze (or NWIB) in Iberia is also referred to as being part of the 'Pre-Atlantic Bronze', the early part of the Bronze Age before all of the Atlantic coastal cultures became part of the wider Atlantic Bronze Age group in Western Europe. It is into this period which falls the Montelavar group.

The NWIB classification covers a period which witnessed the later stages of another difficult climatic phase, towards the end of the third millennium BC when conditions were cooler and drier. Bronze Age cultures only began to flourish in Iberia once this colder spell had faded in the first century or so of the second millennium BC to produce warmer and more humid conditions.

Then by about 1500 BC, both the Asturian-Cantabrian Bronze and the Galician Bronze were able to emerge in north-western Iberia, the latter to absorb the Montelavar. Both are now classified as part of the NWIB, although both still remain relevant sub-classifications of their own.

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 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 BC

The North-Western Iberian Bronze (or NWIB) can be said to begin about now, with the general emergence of early Iberian Bronze Age societies such as the Argaric, Cogotas I, and Levantine Bronze. Of these the Cogotas is geographically closest to the NWIB, adjoining the north-western region at its south-eastern edge.

The Montelavar's Asiego hoard, found in 1912 in the Cabrales district of north-western Iberia and comprising fourteen well-finished flat axes with a length which ranges between 175-212mm and an average weight of 850g per item, with such copper items being typical of the early Bronze Age in north-western Iberia between about 2200-1700 BC

It is also this period into which can be placed the Montelavar horizon, now conceptually also part of the NWIB but originally formulated as a cultural horizon in its own right in an effort to explain the region's poorly-understood archaeology.

c.1500 BC

The Galician Bronze emerges in the middle Iberian Bronze Age and within the wider archaeological concept of a North-Western Iberian Bronze. Its arrival also signals an end date for the concept of a Montelavar horizon of archaeological remains.

The neighbouring Asturian-Cantabrian Bronze, the Western Bronze in western-central Iberia, and the more southerly Western Andalusian Bronze also all emerge at this approximate time.

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)