The Vaccean marble worker who did not know how to write and engraved the funerary inscription upside down

The problem epigraphers, historians, and archaeologists face with the enigmatic Vaccea culture is twofold.

First of all, they are not sure that this people of Celtic origin, settled in the middle valley of the Duero, mastered writing;

at most they imitated that of their Celtiberian neighbors, according to specialists in Paleohispanic writings.

The second, being mostly agraphers, used on some occasion the Iberian script (a mixture of alphabet and syllabary of another pre-Roman people of the Peninsula) to record inscriptions.

In the Vaccean site of Dessobriga (Osorno la Mayor, Palencia), two examples of this epigraphic muddle have been found: a Vaccean pottery container with two engraved seals and a strange funerary stela that contains errors and mysteries.

Marguerite Torrione,

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Everything in Dessobriga is enigmatic, because it is unknown.

Its archaeological territory extends around the elevation of Las Cuestas, over almost 200 hectares.

From their strategic position, the inhabitants of an

(fortified citadel)

they dominated the fertile plain and the paths that connected the mountains of Palencia and the foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains.

A markedly cereal-producing town, the Roman troops of Emperor Augustus needed its large warehouses to feed themselves and, at the same time, secure a bridgehead on the plain before undertaking punitive actions on the indomitable north of the peninsula.

The first settlers settled during the First Iron Age, around the 6th century BC.

C., on the hill where they would build Dessobriga.

The city maintained its indigenous identity until the beginning of the Cantabrian Wars (29 to 19 BC) when it was attacked by Rome.

The archaeological investigations carried out between 2013 and 2019―the covid-19 paralyzed the works―allowed the demarcation of two clear areas of the city: the acropolis (the highest habitat area and plateau) and a ritual area or necropolis of the Second Age del Hierro (4th to 1st centuries BC) ―the “field of pits” that Torrione speaks of― on the northwest slope of the settlement.

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Funerary stele of Dessobriga.

What is most surprising in this archaeological site is that in the lower area, an area dominated by the

breakwater , the Vacceos buried both everyday objects and valuables in holes, which were sealed with the same earth extracted and covered with boulders.

Inside it has been found Vaccea wheel pottery, incised and painted, metals (iron and bronze objects), hand mills, remains of flint carving, fusayolas, engraved marbles...

Torrione explains it: “Because of its characteristics and the analyzes carried out, it must be understood in a symbolic key: a ritual space related to death, with the agrarian cycles and the underworld, where the materials were intentionally deposited.

But the possible symbolic dimension of these deposits, which escape the trivial, is still difficult to define, unless extensive excavations are carried out to determine the models of each structure and of the whole”.

In 2017, when work began to map the site and draw up the paleotopographic map, two large sandstone blocks caught our attention.

Once turned over, the presence of engraved signs was found on one of them.

“Iberian Signatory”, affirms the professor.

Burial area in pit at the foot of the 'oppidum' and lower right, partial magnetogram of Dessobriga.

The language of the Iberians - a people that extended along the Mediterranean coast from the south of France to Andalusia and, therefore, hundreds of kilometers from the Vacceos - was maintained between the 5th century BC.

C. and the I d.

C., but has not been deciphered.

The Iberian was not part of the Indo-European languages, from which Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and most of the European languages ​​come.

It can be read, but not translated, beyond some very repeated short inscriptions and from which, by deduction, linguists derive the meaning.

The Celtiberians, neighbors of the Vacceos, adopted the Iberian script, adapting it to their own language and phonetics.

About 500 Celtiberian epigraphs are known, which would form about a thousand words.

“But the knowledge we have is limited to what is written.

Most of the interpretable terms belong to a restricted lexical field, which corresponds only to anthroponyms [names of people], toponyms [of place] and ethnonyms [names of peoples or ethnic groups].

Very little is known about its syntax”, clarifies the Hispanist.

It is suspected that the Celtiberians began to use writing because of the prestige it brought in imitation of the Romans.

But they did not adopt the Latin alphabet, but the Iberian script "thanks to the mercantile and aristocratic contacts" that they had with another of the great peninsular peoples: the Iberians.

“All this means that, in the absence of a Rosetta stone, Iberists and Celtiberists torture their neurons and build very subtle castles of cards in terms of epigraphy.

Any novelty or deviation from orthodoxy disturbs them”, comments Torrione.

In theory, the Vacceos imitated the Iberian graphemes without developing texts and with a supposedly ornamental use.

“The epigraphic testimonies that emerged late in the Vaccean territory [between the second century BC and the first half of the s.

I d.

C.] would respond to a timid beginning of literacy, so there was no actual Vaccea funerary epigraphy either.”

However, one of the stelae found in the ritual area of ​​Dessobriga reads Touto, a proper name of Celtic origin.

The lapidary began to engrave it in a first line from right to left, but he miscalculated and had to stop.

"She ran out of paper," jokes the French professor.

In the second line, she recorded the syllabus “to”, although inverted, and the segment “ban”, very frequent in Iberian epigraphy.

"Ban" has demonstrative and possessive value,

Vaccea funerary grave with stele in Dessobriga.Margarita Torrione

This proper name of Celtic etymology has been traced by Torrione in inscriptions discovered in the provinces of Palencia, Salamanca, Zamora, Cáceres, Ciudad Real, Cuenca and Barcelona, ​​as well as in the Portuguese Castelo Branco.

The Touto of Dessobrigra must have been an individual known in the

, because his tombstone “lacks a polyonymic onomastic formula” (alluding to the family group or the father);

that is to say, it was not necessary to record his

, because everyone understood who he was.

The origin of the vacceo people is unresolved.

It is unknown if their language was close to or different from Celtiberian.

“It is difficult to define the extensive Vaccea region [almost 50,000 square kilometers] from a linguistic point of view, because it is one of the epigraphically less dense peninsular areas.

Only anthroponymy comes to slightly alleviate this deficiency, and thanks to the fact that most of the indigenous names have come to us through epigraphs written in Latin”.

Torrione adds: “The Vaccean pseudo-epigraphs, let's call them that until new discoveries, reveal that some of their members learned to write and others later began to imitate them for prestige.

The adoption of a script is complex and is conditioned by social and ideological structures.

The Vaccea aristocracy does not seem to have had as marked an inclination as the Celtiberian for epigraphy, nor for minting money.

With a cereal economy, more than texts, it would need concise expressions”.

For example: “De Touto”.

To dry.

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