The discovery of the first Tartessian sculptures turns the study of the pre-Roman culture that dominated the southwest of the peninsula upside down

Each step that the site of Casas de Turuñuelo, in Guareña (Badajoz) -where an enormous two-story building of 2,500 years old is being unearthed- makes it more difficult to sustain the old theory that says that the Tartessian culture that occupied the peninsular southwest between the 9th and 5th centuries before our era did not have its own entity.

To some fabulous material wealth —gold and bronze, ivories…— and construction elements at the level of the most advanced of the time in the entire Mediterranean —a lime and clay mortar, forged later, indications of a false vault—, we add now the finding of five unusual sculptures.

These are the remains of five almost life-size stone busts that not only give a new turn to the investigation of Tartesus, but also show for the first time faces that could resemble those of its inhabitants.

The perfection of shapes that can be seen above all in two of them is not far from the best pieces that were produced at the time on the other side of the Mediterranean, in Greece and Etruria, and autochthonous elements such as earrings or hoop earrings (earrings with a hanging ornament) make them the first Tartessian sculptures, a finding of the caliber of the Lady of Elche, dated between the 5th and 4th centuries BC.

"Whether it was an artisan who came from another place or someone born in the area who mastered the techniques, it seems clear that they were sculpted here, which also says a lot about the level of sophistication of those who commission something like this," explains Sebastián Celestino, a researcher at the Institute. of Archeology of Mérida (mixed center of the CSIC and the Junta de Extremadura) and co-director of the project.

After decades in which the only remotely similar sculptural expressions found in sites of the time were small bronzes of Phoenician origin, "this breaks the paradigm that the Tartessian was an aniconic culture, that is, that it had no figurative or anthropomorphic representation" Celestino continues.

The other person in charge of the site, Esther Rodríguez, insists on her part that the find also begins to rewrite the history of art,

Specifically, about the earrings that two of them wear, Rodríguez adds: "This type of earrings have been found in other sites of the time and in the region, so we have very well documented them, but now we finally know how they were placed : the chain was used to hold it to the ear”, he explains.

In another of the busts, with the appearance of a warrior, a braid can be clearly seen, a very common symbol of transition to adulthood in the protohistory of the Iberian Peninsula.

In fact, the researchers work with the idea that the set of pieces, all with a flat back, belong to the same relief that would surely tell a story starring, among others, this young warrior and, perhaps, the goddesses who protect—the two women with the fuller faces.

Reconstructed piece that could represent a young warrior in which a braid can be seen, a symbol of the transition to adulthood.

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The stone of this bust is blackened, in all probability, because it was affected by the embers of the fire that followed the destruction of the Tartessian sanctuary.

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In this other piece you can perfectly appreciate, in addition to the earrings or earrings, the diadem that adorns the forehead of this woman who could, perhaps, represent a goddess.Samuel Sánchez

In this fourth piece, some details of the upper part of the bust are barely visible.

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The sculptures were consciously beaten.

The piece that has been found of this fifth piece allows, however, to intuit the eye, the nose and the mouth.

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Detail of the hollow gold earring of the bust blackened by fire.

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Detail of the nose and mouth of another of the sculptural pieces found in the Turuñuelo de Guareña site.Samuel Sánchez

The sculptures were found scattered in one of the rooms that archaeologists have unearthed during the fifth excavation campaign of this unusual two-story building, unique in the western Mediterranean, which continues to shed light on a civilization shrouded for many decades in the mists of myths due to the scarcity of material remains that would allow their study.

The room, surrounded by several steps, could have a public use in this sanctuary which, as both the riches found and the level of organization necessary to build it suggest, could have been both an economic and political center.

In any case, the fact that the pieces were found in that room does not necessarily mean that the relief once adorned that space, since this building, like others in the area around the same time, was thoroughly destroyed, burned buried and abandoned.

In this case, they did so after a great banquet and the sacrifice of more than fifty animals, including horses, cows, pigs and a dog, which, appearing in a courtyard around a monumental staircase, form the first hecatomb of comparable size. to the religious holocausts described in the Old Testament and the

.

Why one day 2,500 years ago the inhabitants of the place made that decision represents one of the great mysteries that researchers face.

But the fact is that, in doing so, they inadvertently preserved all the remains of the passage of time - the clay they used to bury him has acted as a kind of protective urn - and, at the same time, made the work of archaeologists more complex. , who are finding, scattered as they go, the fragments of the puzzle.

For example, they do not lose hope of finding the rest of a small Greek statue (the marble places its origin there) of which they only found the feet several campaigns ago.

In the case of the Tartessian sculptures presented now, they also do not rule out the appearance of some more of the pieces that resulted from the violent blows they were dealt.

In many cases, at eye level;

a cruelty, as they are human faces, which opens the hypothesis that the attackers were people from outside the sanctuary, as explained by Rodríguez and Celestino.

Aerial view of the works at the archaeological site of Turuñuelo de Guareña, in Badajoz.

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The Turuñuelo work team opens a new room in the Tartessian building during the project's fifth excavation campaign.

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For the moment, what we have to do now is study the sculptures —they are comparing them with the Etruscan, Iberian and Greek ones of the time, without having found anything similar for the moment— and try to locate the stone from which they are made, surely some kind of calcerenita, says Rodríguez.

At the end of this month, the fifth excavation campaign of the Construyendo Tarteso project will conclude, which is part of the National R+D+i Plan of the Ministry of Science and Innovation and which is financed by the General Secretariat of Science of the Junta de Extremadura , the Badajoz Provincial Council and the Palarq Foundation.

Some work that still has a long way to go —some 1,500 square meters of the estimated 8,000 that the entire site has— have been unearthed, but they have already offered numerous new keys to finally begin to understand architecture, the economy, the social organization or the customs -numerous fabrics have been found, among them, the oldest fragment of wool found in the Iberian Peninsula- of Tarteso.

A civilization that, however, had its main nucleus elsewhere, further south, around the Guadalquivir, between Huelva, Seville and Cádiz.

There, from the 9th century BC, the Tartessian culture was born as a result of the hybridization between the Phoenician colonizers and the local settlers, which prospered and became rich thanks to the metal trade.

At some point in this process, the periphery of the Middle Valley of the Guadalquivir —where the most numerous Tartessian remains found to date are located— began to receive large waves of immigration from the central nucleus, perhaps due to some type of crisis surrounding the 6th century before our era (possibly economic, climatic or a mixture of both) that made it flourish to the point shown by the Turuñuelo building.

A point that, according to the findings made so far and with the climax of the five stone sculptures, underpins not only the idea of ​​its own culture, but of a high culture comparable to the most advanced of the moment in the entire Mediterranean, they point out. the researchers.

In the exhibition

, at the Regional Archaeological Museum of Madrid in Alcalá de Henares, you can see until September 24 some of the objects documented in the Turuñuelo excavations together with some of the most important Tartessian remains found to date. the date both in Spain and Portugal.

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