European Kingdoms

Western Andalusian Bronze (Bronze Age) (Iberia)
c.1500 - 700 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 Western Andalusian Bronze in Iberia is not overly detailed, but it does seem to have been closely connected to the Argaric culture and the Los Millares civilisation. The majority of the archaeology in Andalusia seems to be confined to the east, areas which either bordered the Argaric or were close to the Los Millares to the near north.

This period witnessed the gradual appearance of bronze tools and daggers in the general region, leading to another concentration in the south-west in what is now referred to as the pyrites belt. Archaeological evidence has also revealed in the lower Guadalquivir the remains of internally-burnished pottery, with this region of Iberia eventually becoming home to the Tartessian culture while also being connected with other Atlantic Bronze Age centres.

The Iberian pyrite belt is where, today, Britain's Rio Tinto Zinc carries out many of its mining operations. The Rio Tinto river in south-western Spain has a name which is said to derive from its colour change due to extensive mining.

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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 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, 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.

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)

The neighbouring Galician Bronze, the western-central Iberian Western Bronze, and the more southerly Western Andalusian Bronze also all emerge at this approximate time.

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 and the Iberian Bronze Age. In the latter it encompasses Asturian-Cantabrian Bronze, the Galician Bronze, the Western Bronze (which subsumes the Vila Nova de Sao Pedro), and the Western Andalusian Bronze.

Andalusia's pyrite mines were exploited with increasing intensity from the Bronze Age onwards, with the plentiful supply perhaps luring the Phoenicians into set up trading posts in Iberia

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.1104 BC

This is the traditional date of founding for Gadir, which puts it at the very beginning of the appearance of Phoenician culture in the Near East. It also places it midway through the Atlantic Bronze Age, which may not have reached this part of Iberia during the Iberian Bronze Age. Instead this region is on the edge of the Western Andalusian Bronze.

c.900 - 800 BC

The Atlantic Bronze Age collapses between Iberia and the British Isles of the Beaker folk. In the latter these people have already been superseded in the south and east by the proto-Celtic Urnfield people.

This map showing Late Bronze Age cultures in Europe displays the widespread expansion of the Urnfield culture and many of its splinter groups, although not the smaller groups who reached Britain, Iberia, and perhaps Scandinavia too (click or tap on map to view full sized)

In Central Europe the widespread Urnfield culture has also already heralded an Iron Age which has rendered the Bronze Age out-of-date. In Iberia the new iron-using order establishes itself in the form of the Castro culture in the north-west, Cogotas II in central areas, and the Tartessian in the south-west (the latter during the 800s BC decline of the Western Andalusian Bronze).