Heraldry for the Dead: Memory, Identity, and the Engraved Stone Plaques of Neolithic Iberia 9780292794184

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her aldry for the dead

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her aldry for the dead Memory, Identity, and the Engraved Stone Plaques of Neolithic Iberia katina t. lillios

university of texas press Austin

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This book has been supported by an endowment dedicated to classics and the ancient world and funded by the Areté Foundation; the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; the Dougherty Foundation; the James R. Dougherty, Jr. Foundation; the Rachael and Ben Vaughan Foundation; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The endowment has also benefited from gifts by Mark and Jo Ann Finley, Lucy Shoe Meritt, the late Anne Byrd Nalle, and other individual donors.

Copyright © 2008 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2008 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lillios, Katina T., 1960– Heraldry for the dead : memory, identity, and the engraved stone plaques of neolithic Iberia / Katina T. Lillios. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-292-71822-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Neolithic period—Iberian Peninsula. 2. Plaques, plaquettes—Iberian Peninsula. 3. Burial—Iberian Peninsula. 4. Antiquities, Prehistoric—Iberian Peninsula. 5. Iberian Peninsula—Antiquities. I. Title. gn..il 2008 936.6—dc22 2008017086

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For Morten, who nourished, for Rasmus, who clarified, and for my father, who accepted. And for my mother, who did not live to see its completion, but who believed.

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acknowledgments i x introduction 1 1. themes 7 2. variations 3 8 3. biogr aphies 76 4. agency and ambiguity 1 1 4 5. an iberian writing system 1 4 1 6. memory and identity in neolithic iberia 1 70 notes 1 7 7 bibliogr aphy 1 8 1 illustr ation credits 201 index 2 0 7

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hat a manuscript on the engraved plaques of Iberia now faces me is a mystery almost as perplexing as the engraved plaques themselves. Three major sources of assistance and inspiration deserve my heartfelt thanks: first, the museums, granting agencies, and educational institutions that provided generous financial and institutional support; second, my colleagues and students, who took part in countless conversations, discussions, and exchanges about ideas developed in this book; and third, my intellectual “ancestors”—former teachers and advisors. The Archaeological Institute of America awarded me an Archaeology of Portugal Grant in 2003 that allowed me to study and photograph hundreds of plaques found in the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia, the Museu do Carmo, and the Museu Geológico in Lisbon. In 2004 I received an Arts and Humanities Initiative grant from the University of Iowa, which funded the technical support that helped produce and ultimately launch the electronic database of the plaques: the Engraved Stone Plaque Registry and Inquiry Tool (ESPRIT). ESPRIT constitutes the empirical basis for the ideas in this work. The University of Iowa Office of the Vice President for Research provided support for the preparation of this manuscript. The actual creation of ESPRIT required a level of collaboration, generosity, and collegiality that I find both overwhelming and humbling. I owe many people many thanks. First I must thank my archaeology students from Ripon College, especially Andrew Rich, who helped me photocopy and catalogue hundreds of plaques on index cards in 2001. Little did they (or I) know where their efforts would lead. The present state of ESPRIT, with records and images of over 1,300 plaques, is the result of being granted access to and being able to photograph and/or reproduce hundreds of plaques found in museums throughout Portugal and Spain. I wish to express my deepest gratitude to the many curators and archaeologists who allowed me to study the plaques in their holdings or to study and photograph plaques from their excavations. They include Dr. Luís Raposo, director of the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia (Lisbon); Dr. José Brandão, curator of the Museu Geológico (Lisbon); Dr. Guillermo S. Kurtz Schaefer, director of the Museo Arqueológico Provincial de Badajoz (Badajoz); Dra. Carmen Cacho, curator at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional (Madrid); Dr. José Arnaud, director of the Museu do Carmo

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(Lisbon); Dr. António Carrilho, curator of the Museu Municipal de Lagos (Lagos); Dr. Diego Oliva Alonso, curator of the Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla (Seville); Drs. Miguel Lago and António Valera of Era-Arqueologia, S.A. (Lisbon); and Dr. Rui Parreira of Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico (IPPAR, Faro). I am also grateful to many archaeologists who granted permission to reproduce images of plaques from their publications in ESPRIT: Dr. António Carlos Silva (IPPAR, Évora), Dr. João Cardoso (Universidade Aberta, Lisbon), Dr. Víctor Hurtado Pérez (Universidad de Sevilla), Dra. Raquel Vilaça (Universidade de Coimbra), Dr. Lars Larsson (University of Lund), Dr. Manuel Calado (Universidade de Lisboa), Dr. João Ludgero Gonçalves (Museu Municipal de Cadaval), Dra. Primitiva Bueno Ramírez (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares), and Dr. Victor Gonçalves (Universidade de Lisboa). I owe special thanks to Dr. Dirce Marzoli, director of the German Archaeological Institute, Madrid, for graciously allowing me to reproduce many illustrations from the Leisners’ publications. I am also profoundly grateful for all the technical assistance over the years that ultimately made ESPRIT a reality. Jean Moore, Monika Pawlak, Angela Collins, and Meredith Anderson helped scan and prepare the plaque images for use in ESPRIT. Angela Collins also prepared some of the maps in this book. Stephanie Serlin and María Mercedes Ortiz Rodríguez translated German passages from the Leisners’ publications. Sally Donohue helped set up the original Filemaker Pro version of ESPRIT. For the spatial analyses I carried out on the plaques, I am indebted to Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography). Michael Chibnik, my colleague at the Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, generously offered advice on the statistical analyses that were conducted by UI graduate student Erica Begun. I owe huge thanks to the Academic Technologies team at the University of Iowa: Steven Bowers, Danny Novo, and especially Denny Crall—for bringing ESPRIT to life on the World Wide Web. I wish also to thank those colleagues and friends who provided encouragement throughout this project’s genesis, offered critical insights on ideas and methods, or pointed out useful bibliographic materials: Ana Cristina Araújo, Bettina Arnold, Paul Axelrod, Douglass Bailey, Elizabeth Barber, Nanette Barkey, Rui Boaventura, Primitiva Bueno Ramírez, Donald Crowe, James Enloe, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Antonio Gilman, Billy Graves, Elisa Guerra-Doce, Richard J. Harrison, Adi Hastings, Paulo Heitlinger, Michael Herzfeld, Petya Hristova, Andy Jones, Evelyn Kain, Meena Khandelwal, Michael Kunst, Ana Cristina Martins, Lynn Meskell, Heather Miller, Teresa Orozco Köhler, Brent Peterson, Jeffrey Quilter, Caroline Read, James Sackett, Frank Salomon, Barbara Sässe, John Steinberg, Tom Wake, Birgit Wegemann, Estella Weiss-Krejci, and João Zilhão. I am especially grateful to those colleagues who read drafts of chapters of this book and offered helpful suggestions: Thomas Charlton, Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Leonardo García Sanjuán, Mary Helms, and Robin Skeates. The reviewers of this manuscript, Javier Urcid and John Papadopoulos, provided extraordinarily detailed suggestions and corrections to this text, which I have done my best to address. The editorial staff of x

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the University of Texas Press, particularly Jim Burr, Lynne Chapman, and Kathy Lewis, provided steady encouragement during this book’s gestation and did a tremendous job to improve the clarity and consistency of my writing. Needless to say, I assume full responsibility for any errors that remain. Many of my students at the University of Iowa have also traveled with me on this journey, and I appreciate all their help and intellectual insights along the way: Erica Begun, Grant McCall, Alexander Woods, and Jonathan Thomas. At some point in writing this book, it occurred to me that its interdisciplinary content was in large part a product of my own undergraduate and graduate education, particularly my graduate training at Yale University. At Yale I was encouraged to read broadly and deeply, not only within anthropology but also in other disciplines. My intellectual peregrinations took me to the Departments of Forestry and Environmental Studies, History of Art, and Geology and Geophysics—as well as to diverse anthropology classes. For that privilege, I especially wish to acknowledge Professors Harold Conklin, Michael Dietler, Robert Gordon, Frank Hole, Andrew Moore, Jerome J. Pollitt, Garth Voigt (now deceased), and Timothy Weiskel. Finally, I owe special gratitude to my husband, Morten Schlütter, and our son, Rasmus. I am blessed by their love, patience, good humor—and indeed their (now) shared appreciation of these tantalizing objects.

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he engraved stone plaques of prehistoric Iberia are mind traps. Their hypnotically repetitive designs, the eyes that stare out from some of them, and their compositional standardization have intrigued prehistorians for over a century (Figure I.1). Discovered in hundreds of Late Neolithic (3500–2000 BC) burials throughout southwest Iberia (Figure I.2), the engraved plaques have enjoyed an enduring place in the scholarly imagination. The nineteenth-century Portuguese medical doctor Augusto Filippe Simões (1878:53) wondered whether they might be “amulets or insignias or emblems or cult objects.”  After the eminent Portuguese geologist Carlos Ribeiro showed Florentino Ameghino, the Argentine naturalist, some of the plaques at the Paris Exposition in 1878, Ameghino (1879:219) speculated that they represented “a complete system of ideographic writing that awaits decipherment and obscures facts of great importance.”  The Portuguese prehistorian Vergílio Correia (1917:30) argued that the plaques are “what they simply are—idols or icons of prehistoric divinities.”  The Polish ethnologist Eugeniusz Frankowski (1920:23) believed that the plaques were not idols or divinities but representations of the dead. To the Portuguese archaeologist Victor dos Santos Gonçalves (1999a:114), the plaques unquestionably depict the European Mother Goddess. For nearly twenty years I found the palm-sized plaques easy to ignore. Their subtly engraved lines and their dark gray color hardly called out for attention, particularly when they were displayed in dimly lit museum cases. When the occasional plaque did catch my eye I would, I confess, experience a brief flicker of curiosity. I recall one such moment in the summer of 1994 at the Museu Municipal de Montemor-o-Novo, a small provincial museum in the Alentejo region of southern Portugal. I was visiting the museum with my geologist collaborator Howard Snyder to examine the stone tools in its collection as part of our study of trade during the Late Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula. We were particularly interested in stone tools made of amphibolite, a dark greenish-black metamorphic rock found in this region of Portugal. After noticing a group of engraved plaques displayed next to some amphibolite tools in the museum, we casually remarked that the plaques and the stone tools resembled each other in color, form, and size. Howard even suggested that the plaques’ artists had represented the crystalline microstructure

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f ig u r e i . 1 . Plaque from Olival da Pega (Évora, Portugal). Photograph by author, courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia.

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f ig u r e i .2 . Region in southwest Iberia in which engraved plaques have been found.

of amphibolite in the geometric designs of the plaques. The hot Alentejo sun and hundreds of hours spent peering down a microscope at stone tools had clearly gotten to him. Howard needed a day at the beach, and I did not see myself as an “art and symbolism” person. All this changed, however, in the winter of 2000. My colleague Jonathan Haws had kindly mailed me a new book, Reguengos de Monsaraz: Territórios megalíticos (Gonçalves 1999a), summarizing Gonçalves’ thinking about the archaeology of the Reguengos de Monsaraz region, the heartland of amphibolite and of the engraved slate plaques. The book sat unopened on my office bookshelf for a few weeks, until I had time one evening to look at it. Casually thumbing through the book, I saw familiar images—plans of megaliths, site distribution maps, and photographs of undecorated handmade Neolithic pottery. My calm was disrupted, however, when I reached the full-page color photographs of the engraved plaques. Nestled in my warm and cozy office in Ripon, Wisconsin, while arctic winds howled outside, I was stunned to see the individual incisions and delicate cross-hatchings that filled the designs. For the first time, I noticed the abrasions and scratches and the grooves in the plaques’ perforations left by their original drilling. I could see where engravers had made mistakes and where they had corrected them. I could identify plaques engraved in the same idiosyncratic style and possibly produced by 3

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the same engraver. I saw beautiful plaques and strange plaques. And for the first time the plaques spoke to me. While 5,000 years separate us from the world of Late Neolithic Iberians, there is something palpably accessible about the engraved plaques—at least under good light. I was hooked. Ultimately I was inspired to write this book. This is a book about many things. It is above all about seeing, about seeing with new eyes, and, most importantly, about seeing with multiple eyes. Writing the book has been—and I hope reading it will be—a visually, intellectually, and emotionally stimulating exercise in apprehending a body of material culture through a diverse array of theoretical lenses. Throughout it, I engage a range of epistemologies and methodologies in regard to the engraved plaques—critical historiography, formal analyses, experimental studies, spatial analyses, and interpretative frameworks inspired by memory and visual culture studies. This study seeks to engage with what Michael Herzfeld (2001) has called the “militant middle ground” in anthropology, in which structure and agency, materialism and idealism, and humanism and scientism occupy a shared intellectual space. Thus this book does not seek to contain the plaques in a seamless explanatory package. Theories, I believe, should be tools that generate new questions, provoke new insights, and organize information. They are not intellectual straightjackets. Many questions will remain unanswered, ambiguities will be identified, and contradictions will be teased out. One of my intentions is that this book, as well as the perspectives that it draws upon, will stimulate new pathways of inquiry. While this may be the first book dedicated to the Iberian plaques, I certainly hope it will not be the last. Although the Iberian plaques have been known for over a century and have been interpreted in a variety of ways, most theories about the plaques have been firmly lodged in idealism, an approach that seeks to explain human behavior and material culture through people’s shared values, beliefs, or religious practices (Aunger 1999). The engraved plaques are found in burials and are decorated, which has led most archaeologists to apply idealist models that center on the religious practices and artistic traditions of prehistoric Iberians. While many intriguing questions within this framework have been proposed (such as what the plaques may have depicted), many aspects of the plaques, particularly their material and social dimensions, have remained unaddressed. How were the plaques made? How long did it take to make one? Where were they made? How was their production and distribution organized? Were they the work of specialized artisans? Were they worn or used during a person’s life or were they made at the time of a person’s death? Are there meaningful patterns in their design? Are different plaque types found in different regions? How did making and using the plaques structure the lives of ancient Iberians? Why, indeed, were they made at all? This is also a book about identity and, specifically, the creation of identities during a critical juncture in the history of the Iberian Peninsula. In this book I take identity to be a “relational and sociocultural phenomenon that emerges and circulates in local discourse contexts of interaction rather than a stable structure located 4

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primarily in the individual psyche or in fi xed social categories” (Bucholtz and Hall 2005:585–586). In other words, identity is not inherent in individuals or groups but is the product of engagement, interaction, and ultimately the “social positioning of the self and other” (ibid.:586). During the Late Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula powerful economic and social forces structured the creation of new identities. Human populations were increasingly tethered to a residential base, an outcome of their intensification of agricultural production. At the same time when this residential stability was emerging, however, we also see evidence for increased long-distance travel (at least as experienced by some individuals and groups) to acquire important raw materials from the Alentejo, such as amphibolite for axes and adzes, variscite for beads, and copper for tools and weapons. I suggest that the polarization of experiences and knowledge, differentiating those who traveled from those who stayed closer to home, crystallized in new social identities. I also argue that the encounters of those traders and travelers on the open plains of the Alentejo—coming from diverse regions of the peninsula, perhaps speaking different (mutually unintelligible?) dialects, and competing for the valued resources of the Alentejo—further contributed to the emergence and materialization of social distinctions. The social landscape of the Late Neolithic, such as it was, also would have instigated profound changes in mnemonic practices in order for groups to maintain and legitimate rights to these economic and symbolic resources far from their residential bases. In fact, the material record of the Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula suggests that such transformations occurred—in the reuse of sacred objects, the circulation of the remains of the dead, the mimesis of ancestral landscapes, and the rituals that brought the living and dead together in liminal spaces that both ordered and transcended time, by mobilizing “deep time” (Boric 2003). Thus this book is also about memory and about how people construct their pasts. While memory studies are very much in vogue in academic circles, including archaeology (Herzfeld 2003; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003; Williams 2003), few archaeologists were concerned with memory when I first began thinking seriously about the plaques. But, in the delicately controlled lines and hatching of a plaque that so exquisitely preserve the careful handiwork of a person living 5,000 years ago, one cannot help experiencing, on an intimate level, a sense of shared humanity. As part and parcel of recognizing that humanity comes an awareness that people of the past had their own pasts and their own stories about how they came to be, where they came from, and who they were related to. Once I began to consider these dimensions of Neolithic lifeways, through the material qualities of the plaques, I could begin to ask new questions about the plaques and ultimately contemplate the possibility that they were memory aids, heraldry for the dead, and indeed writing.

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ver since antiquarians began discovering the engraved plaques in the nineteenth century, they have emphasized their homogeneity. Indeed, the plaques are remarkably coherent in their form and design. The Portuguese prehistorian Vergílio Correia (1917:29) noted this nearly a hundred years ago, when he explained that relatively few plaques were published because they were so similar to one another. However, most archaeologists probably highlighted their similarity because they believed that the plaques were part of a singular ideological phenomenon. As I discuss later in this chapter, archaeologists had long thought the Iberian Peninsula was colonized in the Late Neolithic by people from the eastern Mediterranean who came in search of metals and who brought their belief in a Mother Goddess religion with them. Although modern dating systems do not support such an interpretation (nor are there any objects of east Mediterranean origin dating to this period in the Iberian Peninsula), the notion of a Mother Goddess has left a deep impression on the archaeological scholarship of the Iberian Peninsula. In this chapter I begin by summarizing what we know about the Iberian Peninsula prior to the period of the engraved plaques as well as the social and political landscape of the peninsula during their use. Material culture helps us to understand the social and cultural behavior of ancient populations, but the social landscape of an ancient group of people constrains, shapes, and ultimately gives meaning to that material culture. I then review the principal characteristics of the plaques’ formal and design features and outline their general similarities. Finally, I provide an overview of previous scholarship on the plaques.

t h e c u lt u r a l se t t i ng Beginning in the sixth millennium BC, during the period known as the Early Neolithic, human groups living on the Iberian Peninsula underwent a series of social and economic transformations stimulated by the introduction of plant and animal domesticates (Gilman and Thornes 1985; Chapman 1990; Arias 1999; Bernabeu Aubán and Orozco Köhler 1999; Jorge 2000; Kunst 2001) and marked ar-

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f ig u r e 1 . 1 . Megalithic tomb of Gorafe (Granada, Spain). Photograph courtesy of Leonardo García Sanjuán.

chaeologically in some regions by the appearance of cardial shell–decorated ceramics. Whether these transformations occurred as a result of colonization by peoples who traveled along the Mediterranean coast, the trade of foodstuffs without population movement, or some combination of these processes is vigorously debated (Zilhão 1993, 2001; Jackes et al. 1997; Richards 2003; Peña-Chocarro et al. 2005). The speed of the uptake of domesticates is also disputed. Some scholars envision a long and gradual integration of domesticates by hunting and foraging peoples, lasting around 1,000 years. João Zilhão (2001), however, has argued that, if only radiocarbon dates on short-life samples for Early Neolithic sites are taken into account, this uptake actually took no more than six generations and thus was a fairly rapid process. Although the precise dates are still unclear, it appears that some centuries after the appearance of domesticates human groups began to construct megalithic tombs to house their dead (Leisner and Leisner 1943, 1951, 1956, 1959; Leisner 1965, 1998) (Figure 1.1). As in earlier periods, they also used caves and rockshelters. Some of the earliest of these megalithic burials, such as Poço da Gateira (Évora), were individual inhumations without engraved plaques. Although animal herding and agriculture were practiced in many enclaves of the peninsula during the Early Neolithic, particularly in those landscapes not occupied by hunters and foragers, it was not until the Late Neolithic that a fully agricultural and sedentary lifestyle was more firmly established. It was also at this time that the first engraved plaques were made, with the earliest dates for the plaques occurring between 3500 and 3000 BC (Gonçalves 1999a:116). 8

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During the Late Neolithic (3500–2000 BC) human communities farmed wheat and barley and supplemented their agricultural base by herding sheep, goat, cattle, and pigs. They also hunted wild game (such as boar and deer), gathered wild plants and plant products (such as acorns), fished, and collected shellfish, particularly along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. They made their homes in caves, rockshelters, and open-air settlements, especially on hilltops at the confluence of rivers. Some of these hilltop settlements were walled and had circular/semicircular towers or bastions built into their walls (Cardoso 2002). These sites include Zambujal (Sangmeister and Schubart 1981) (Figure 1.2) and Leceia in Portugal (Cardoso 1997) and Almizaraque (Delibes et al. 1986), Los Millares (Molina and Arribas 1993), and Terrera Ventura (Gusi 1986) in Spain. Most settlements were about 1 ha, with population estimates ranging from a dozen to over a thousand individuals. There are larger sites, however, such as Los Millares (5 ha), and some exceptionally large sites, many along the Guadiana River on the border between present-day Portugal and Spain. These include Perdigões in Portugal (16 ha) (Lago et al. 1998), San Blas in Spain (30 ha) (Hurtado Pérez 2004), Ferreira do Alentejo in Portugal (50 ha) (Arnaud 1993), La Pijotilla in Spain (80 ha) (Hurtado Pérez 1987), and the largest yet known, Marroquíes Bajos in Spain

f ig u r e 1 .2 . Zambujal (Lisbon, Portugal). Photograph by Michael Kunst, courtesy of German Archaeological Institute, Madrid.

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f ig u r e 1 .3 . Megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. a, Tholos tomb of La Pijotilla (Badajoz, Spain). b, Passage grave of Cueva de La Pastora (Sevilla, Spain).

(113 ha) (Zafra et al. 1999). Pedro Díaz-del-Río (2004) hypothesized that the size differences among these sites might be explained by their different histories of fusion/fission cycles so characteristic of segmentary societies. Other scholars, such as Susana Oliveira Jorge (2003) and José Enrique Márquez Romero (2006), have questioned the monolithic designation of these sites as settlements. They suggest that the symbolic and phenomenological qualities of these sites should be addressed, such as how they structured vision and visibility, constrained human actions, and delimited space. As with Early Neolithic populations, Later Neolithic peoples in the Iberian Peninsula buried their dead collectively in caves and rockshelters. They also began to house their dead in rock-cut tombs, corbel-vaulted tombs (tholoi), and passage graves (Figure 1.3). Hundreds of these tombs dot the Portuguese and Spanish countryside, though their largest concentrations are in the northwestern and southern regions of the peninsula. Some areas are so densely filled with these tombs—such as the Alentejo province of southern Portugal—that archaeologists have tradition10

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ally viewed them as landscapes of the dead or ancestral geographies. Nonetheless, recent research has indicated that residential occupations are sometimes associated with these burials or are within a few kilometers (Gonçalves 2000; Boaventura 2001). These later tombs, unlike earlier tombs, generally had passages that allowed for repeated access to the dead. Richard Bradley (1998) has termed these “open graves” and has suggested that the construction of these monuments signals a change toward ancestor worship. Funerary rites during this period included both primary burials and the secondary treatment of the corpse (Gonçalves 1999a, 1999b). In the case of secondary burials, clusters of bone groups (such as crania or long bones) were buried together. At the passage graves of Perdigões, Portugal, and La Pijotilla, Spain, for example, cranial bones were generally found along the walls of the chamber (Lago et al. 1998:79; Hurtado Pérez et al. 2002). The bones and artifacts found with these dead are often colored with ochre. Fires were sometimes set within the tomb chamber, probably to purify the interior of the tomb (Rojo-Guerra and Kunst 2002). Offerings were placed with the deceased, some of which were especially made to accompany the dead. These included polished stone axes and adzes (which are regularly found unused), flint blades, arrowheads, stone beads, globular ceramics (which are generally undecorated but sometimes have ocular motifs), stone and bone cylindrical idols (also sometimes incised with ocular motifs), and engraved slate or schist plaques. In the Iberian Peninsula, as in other regions of Europe, megaliths have long biographies. Some have continued to be used in recent times as Christian chapels (for example, São Dinis and São Brissos in Portugal), pig sties, and chicken coops (Leisner and Leisner 1959:167, 319–320). In central and northwestern Iberia megaliths are regularly found with Early Bronze Age deposits. At the Anta 2 do Couto da Espanhola in Portugal, Late Neolithic and Bronze Age artifacts attest to such an enduring use (Cardoso et al. 2000). Similarly, menhir fragments were sometimes incorporated in passage graves, as at Vale de Rodrigo 2 (Évora) (Larsson 2001). The building of annexes is another feature of Iberian megalithic sites. The sites of Comenda and Farisoa, Portugal, both began as a passage grave (anta in Portuguese) and later had a tholos annexed (Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. X and XIV; Gonçalves 1999a:18–19) (Figure 1.4). At the burial complex of Olival da Pega 2 (OP2) (Évora), Gonçalves (1999a:90–111) documented similar rebuildings. The first monument constructed was a large passage grave (OP2a), with 16 m of its corridor preserved. After OP2a was built, the tholos OP2b was annexed. Changes were made during the construction of OP2b, and stones were removed from the original passage grave, presumably to facilitate access. Following this, another tholos (OP2d) was added to the other side of the passage of OP2, and a microtholos (OP2e) was annexed to OP2d. The final funerary deposit (OP2c) was annexed to the southern end of the complex. The variability in tomb types; the size, location, and visibility of these tombs; the number of individuals buried within them; and the quantity and quality of 11

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f ig u r e 1 . 4 . Megalithic tombs with annexes. a, Farisoa (Évora, Portugal), Anta 1 and tholos. b, Comenda (Évora, Portugal), Anta 2 and tholos.

goods found with these individuals all suggest that Late Neolithic societies in the Iberian Peninsula differentiated their members. For example, at the megalithic cemetery/settlement site of Los Millares, Spain, the tombs with the highest proportion of prestige goods were located closest to the settlement (Chapman 1990). Those individuals buried within some of the larger megaliths, such as the Anta Grande do Zambujeiro (Évora) in Portugal (Kalb 1981; Silva and Parreira 1990) (Figure 1.5), with orthostats 6 m high, were likely of a higher status than those housed in smaller megaliths. It is interesting to note, however, that often the largest and most monumental megalithic chambers do not seem to have been primarily used as burial chambers. This is the case at a number of monuments in southern Spain, such as Menga, La Pastora, Matarrubilla, and El Romeral (Leonardo García Sanjuán, personal communication, 2007). The archaeological record of the Late Neolithic of Iberia has both direct and indirect evidence for violent conflict (Kunst 2000). The construction of elaborate systems of fortification with bastions, sometimes involving multiple lines of drystone walls (such as at Los Millares and Zambujal), suggests a need for defense and heightened sociopolitical tensions. Weaponry (such as copper daggers) and painted images of armed people in caves also suggest a militaristic social climate. Direct evidence of violent conflict has been documented in the burials at the Hipogeo de Longar and at San Juan ante Portam Latinam in Spain. At the Hipogeo de Longar (a tomb in which at least 112 individuals of different ages and sexes were buried with few grave goods) 4 individuals were found with arrowheads embedded in their skeletons. At San Juan ante Portam Latinam 9 out of the 289 individuals discovered had arrowheads in them (Vegas et al. 1999). At the end of the Late Neolithic, at about 2000 BC, a significant social rupture occurred in the Iberian Peninsula. Communities living in western and eastern Iberia began to develop along somewhat different evolutionary trajectories (Gilman 12

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1987). These divergent trajectories were likely structured by the distinctive environmental regimes of Iberia: western Atlantic and more humid Iberia vs. eastern Mediterranean and more arid Iberia. Scholars such as Antonio Gilman (1987) and Almudena Hernando Gonzalo (1997) have suggested that in those arid regions of Iberia, where it was riskier to farm and where some form of water management or irrigation of land was likely practiced, aggrandizing individuals had more opportunities to establish permanent control over agricultural systems and to emerge as elites with political, economic, and ideological power than in more humid zones. Thus we see in the Early Bronze Age of eastern (and southern) Iberia an expansion of many of the salient features of the earlier third millennium, such as metallurgy, social inequality, and warfare (Díaz-del-Río and García Sanjuán 2006). The archaeological evidence for the Early Bronze Age (2000–1500 BC) is relatively poor for western Iberia, where the engraved plaques are found. But what we know suggests that most settlements were abandoned and new and unfortified sites, such as Agroal (Lillios 1993a), were established. These sites were also more ephemeral and less variable in size and structure than earlier Late Neolithic settle-

f ig u r e 1 .5. Anta Grande do Zambujeiro (Évora, Portugal).

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ments. Changes in burial practices accompanied these shifts in settlement pattern. Individual burials became the new norm, perhaps reflecting a social order in which the memory of individuals took precedence over the memory of groups. Overall, less energy was invested in burial monuments and mortuary ritual activity. Other indicators of social organization provide further evidence of a major social transformation during this time. Long-distance exchange connections were largely discontinued; for example, items made of ivory and ostrich eggshell were no longer being acquired from North Africa. The production of craft specialist goods also declined; ceramics were largely undecorated and poorly fired and appear to be of local production, and flaked stone tools became quite rare. The few copper objects (awls, fishhooks, axes) of the period are the only evidence of specialized craft activities for the Early Bronze Age of western Iberia. The causes of these discontinuities are unclear, but they could well be related to climatic and environmental changes that are documented for the third millennium BC, social conflict, and/or a realignment of the political order toward more decentralized and more egalitarian polities (Lillios 1993b). Clearly, a great deal of research remains to be done on this critical transformation in Iberian history. Scholarship in the Early Bronze Age of western Iberia is relatively sparse because (in addition to the poor preservation of settlements) the material culture of the period is largely aniconic, and undecorated and highly fragmented ceramics of this type are more difficult to date and seriate. This paucity of iconographically rich material culture is perhaps one of the most salient differences between the Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age of western Iberia.

themes Of all the objects that Late Neolithic Iberians created, the palm-sized engraved stone plaques are arguably the most distinctive and emblematic of the period. Made of dark slate and schist and, less often, lighter-colored pink sandstone, they were engraved with geometric motifs and anthropomorphic or zoomorphic representations. They were most often perforated with one or two holes, suggesting that they were suspended by a cord. Most are trapezoidal in form, although some are rectangular or composite, with a cut-out “head” separated from a “body.” Archaeologists have excavated these intriguing objects from over two hundred burials in the southwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula, from the Lisbon area in Portugal to Huelva in Spain. They are most densely concentrated, however, in the Portuguese district of Évora (Figure 1.6). They have been recovered in all tomb types used by Late Neolithic populations, including megaliths, caves, rockshelters, rock-cut tombs, and tholoi (Figure 1.7). In these burials the engraved plaques are associated with undecorated pottery, flint blades, and unused polished stone tools. Some tombs contained rich troves of plaques. For example, the large passage grave of Anta Grande do Olival da Pega 14

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f ig u r e 1 .6. Distribution of sites where plaques have been found and frequency of plaques per site. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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f ig u r e 1 .7. Contexts in which engraved plaques have been found.

(Évora) had 134 plaques (Leisner and Leisner 1951:240), and the tholos of Escoural (Évora) had 167 plaques, the largest number yet found in a single tomb (Santos and Veiga Ferreira 1969). However, some tombs that are contemporary to these had none (Gonçalves 2003a). This variability in the number of plaques among tombs was also shared by the individuals buried in these tombs, as not all people were buried with plaques. For example, at the site of Cabeço da Arruda 1 (Lisbon) the minimum number of individuals buried was 19, yet only 11 plaques were recovered (Spindler 1981:224; Silva 1999:356–357). The association of plaques with individuals within these tombs is often poorly documented. Plaques discovered with a preserved skeleton are found on the deceased’s chest or side (Gonçalves 1999b:87). To date, very few plaques have been found in association with a skeleton that has been aged or sexed. One of the only cases is from the recently excavated tomb of Monte Canelas (Faro). Here there is a reasonably secure association between a female skeleton and an engraved plaque (Parreira 2005). Although determining the association between individuals and plaques has been hampered by the long histories of these tombs, we have at the artificial cave of Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon) an intriguing spatial patterning of the plaques and a group of crania (Leisner et al. 1969). The engraved plaques from this site (totaling 23) were found in the same chamber with a concentration of skulls (Figure 1.8). This sector of the cave (the western chamber or Westkammer) is also the oldest. The central cluster of crania in the Westkammer, in the oldest and most inaccessible part of the tomb, strongly suggests that it was an ancestral focal point. The spatial association of the engraved plaques with these skulls also suggests that these plaques were linked to a founding or ancestral group at this site. 16

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Rarely, plaques (principally as fragments) are found at settlements. These settlements include Espargueira (Lisbon), Carnaxide (Lisbon), Vila Nova de São Pedro (Santarém), and Zambujal (Lisbon) (Spindler 1981:224–225). There are well over two thousand (and perhaps close to four thousand) engraved plaques housed in museums and collections throughout Spain and Portugal (Lillios 2004a), the result of hundreds of excavations carried out by countless prehistorians over more than a century. A few plaques are presently housed in museums outside the Iberian Peninsula (such as the British Museum, the Ashmolean, and the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in the United Kingdom), and some have even made their way into private collections (Hibbs 1993). Judging from the number of plaques that have been published annually over the past few years, I estimate that archaeologists discover approximately fifty plaques each year in new excavations. Based on my studies of plaques in Portuguese museums (discussed in more detail later in this chapter), many hundreds of plaques remain unpublished and uncatalogued. Therefore the true number of plaques produced in prehistory is likely to have been in the thousands. In order to consider the intensity of the production of engraved plaques, we also need to consider the duration of time during which they were made. Unfortunately, however, archaeologists have had considerable difficulty in determining their precise dating and chronology, for a number of reasons. First, burials in later prehistory were repeatedly reused, sometimes until the Early Bronze Age (as discussed above). Therefore artifacts and skeletal remains are often found disturbed. Furthermore, the acidic soils of the Alentejo (where most of these burials are located) do not regularly preserve skeletal remains, so direct dating of associated

f ig u r e 1 .8. Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon, Portugal), showing the relationship between plaques and crania in the Westkammer.

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f ig u r e 1 .9. Distribution of plaques and slate outcrops in western Iberia. Map by Angela Collins and author.

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individuals is difficult. Many plaques come from old excavations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which also accounts for the rarity of good contextual information on artifacts and skeletal remains associated with the plaques. Finally, it is clear that some of the plaques were curated and recycled. Fragments of plaques are occasionally found reused as pendants in Late Neolithic burials (which I discuss more fully in Chapters 2 and 3); thus their life histories must be seen as extending beyond their initial manufacture, use, and burial. The few dates that we have for associated skeletal and other material remains suggest that the plaques were used between 3500 and 2500 cal BC (Gonçalves 1999a:117). In terms of cultural phases, they were used well into the Beaker period (the second half of what is often known as the Copper Age), as the site of Pedra Branca (Setúbal, Portugal) demonstrates (Veiga Ferreira et al. 1975). For the same reason that we have few absolute dates for the plaques, we are also a long way from proposing a relative chronology. We cannot say which plaques were the earliest and which were the latest. Indeed, the large regional extent of the plaques’ distribution forces us to consider the possibility of multiple origins for the manufacture of the plaques, which may have been roughly contemporary. Given the abundance of plaque types in the Alentejo region and local availability of slate in this region (Figure 1.9), it is likely that one of the possibly multiple “birthplaces” of the plaques was in fact the undulating plains of the Portuguese Alentejo.

a h is t ory of pl aqu e schol a r sh i p For over a century the mysterious stone plaques of Neolithic Portugal and Spain have engaged the minds and imagination of countless prehistorians. Research has revolved around many of the same questions that stimulate most archaeological research, including inquiries into origins, chronology, classification, function, and meaning. In plaque studies these questions have taken the following specific forms: 1. Origins: Where did the inspiration for the plaques and their imagery originate? Were the plaques based on east Mediterranean prototypes, or were they inspired by local Iberian visual culture? 2. Chronology and evolution: To what periods do the different plaque types date? How did the plaques change over time? Did the plaques begin as representational art, depicting objects or beings, and become more abstract, geometric, and schematic over time? Or did they begin as geometric or abstract objects and take on more overtly representational qualities over time? 3. Classification: How can the plaques be meaningfully classified and grouped? 4. Representation, function, and meaning: Did the plaques’ form and design depict things, such as axes or palm trees, divinities, or the dead? Were they

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themes religious idols? Were they doubles that housed the soul of the dead? Were they emblems of ethnic groups?

Structuring this historiographic narrative have been tensions and debates among scholars working in different intellectual and national traditions. Spanish and Portuguese scholars have tended to emphasize the unique qualities of the plaques, interpreting them as historical or art-historical documents. North European and American scholars have generally approached the plaques as material expressions of human social and cultural behavior and have sought ethnographic parallels to understand this behavior. What is most striking about the historiography of plaque research, however, is the endurance of the view that they represent the Mother Goddess. While challenges to this model have appeared regularly in the literature, they have not had much impact on the field. These alternative models include the plaques as writing systems (Ameghino 1879), as representations of the dead (Frankowski 1920), and as heraldry (Lisboa 1985).

In the Beginning The history of Iberian plaque studies takes us back to the primordial beginnings of European archaeology in the mid- to late nineteenth century. During this period in Portugal and Spain the first archaeological societies were created, the first museums were established, the first archaeological conferences were held, and the first journals and monographs devoted to Iberian prehistory were published. Through these institutional vehicles, learned scholars throughout Europe and even outside Europe shared, discussed, and debated their discoveries. The creation of academic societies and museums provided the institutional foundations for the study of the Iberian past. In 1848, for example, the Comissão dos Trabalhos Geológicos was created in Portugal (Santos 1980:261). This society, one of the first of its kind in Europe, sponsored the important work of the geologist Carlos Ribeiro, who was to later write about the plaques (Ribeiro 1878–1880). In 1863 the Associação dos Arquitectos Civis e dos Arqueólogos Portugueses was formed, which later founded the Museu do Carmo (Serrão 1983:195). In 1867 the Museo Arqueológico Nacional was founded in Madrid. In 1893 José Leite de Vasconcelos founded the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia in Lisbon (Serrão 1983:196), which now houses the largest collection of plaques in the world. The dissemination of archaeological research to other European scholars was facilitated by the creation of archaeological journals and the hosting of academic conferences. In Spain the Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos was published beginning in 1871 (Díaz-Andreu 1997:13). The Portuguese journals Revista de Guimarães and O Arqueólogo Português published their first issues in 1884 and 1895, respectively. In 1880 the Ninth International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology was held in Lisbon (Santos 1980:258). At this congress a large number of prehistorians first came to know about the archaeology of Iberia 20

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(Veiga 1887:429–430; Déchelette 1908:219). Indeed, after attending the congress, the French prehistorian Émile Cartailhac glorified the Iberian Peninsula as “the promised land of prehistorians” (Siret 1913:ix). During this fertile and dynamic period engraved plaques from Portugal and later from Spain were first recovered and noted by prehistorians. The first plaques were published and illustrated in 1878 in Introducção á Archeologia da Peninsula Iberica, the oldest summary of Iberian prehistory, written by the Portuguese medical doctor Augusto Filippe Simões (1835–1884). The approach of Simões, like many early writers on the plaques, was largely descriptive and comparative, and he offered a range of possible interpretations. To him, they could be “amulets or insignias or emblems or cult objects” (Simões 1878:53); he was not committed to one interpretation or another. The small number of plaques known at that time (Simões mentioned twelve, all from Portugal) certainly justified his caution. Simões sought ethnographic comparisons for the plaques, such as the hafted axes with perforations from Pennsylvania described in Reliquiae Aquitanicae (Lartet and Christy 1875). Simões concluded, though, that the plaques could not have served such a function, because they were too fragile. With respect to their dates, Simões could only state that the plaques must have dated to the time of megalith building in the Iberian Peninsula. The plaques known at the time were all geometric in design and none were overtly anthropomorphic, so there was no mention of their being deities or Mother Goddesses—interpretations which came to play a dominant role in later plaque studies. Although Simões adopted a cautious scientism with respect to the plaques and other archaeological material he discussed, he was more passionate about his motivations for writing the book and about the role of archaeology in the intellectual development of his country. In his prologue he described the relative superiority of the Spaniards in understanding and appreciating archaeology (Simões 1878:3). He lamented: By comparison with other cultivated nations, conditions in Portugal, where this issue is concerned, are not favorable. Only the initiative of governments, combined with the dedication of those who are not indifferent to the progress of science and the past and future of humankind, can raise us from our current disillusionment/apathy. (ibid.:10)

It thus seemed to Simões (ibid.:iii) an “opportune time to . . . contribute to the common progress of Spain and Portugal.”  In this quotation Simões may be revealing his sympathies toward a pan-Iberian nationalism, a movement that favored the unification of Portugal and Spain along the lines of what Italy and Germany had achieved in 1870 and 1871, respectively (Díaz-Andreu 1997:15). At about the same time, the Argentine paleontologist Florentino Ameghino (1854–1911) included a discussion of the Portuguese plaques in his study of the prehistory of La Plata, Argentina (Ameghino 1879, 1880). Ameghino saw clear paral21

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lels between the engravings on the Portuguese plaques and those on stone plaques from the Río Negro region of Patagonia. We find these signs to be absolutely identical to those that are found on some slate plaques of Portugal that the distinguished Portuguese geologist don Carlos Ribeiro has informed us about. (Ameghino 1880:273)

Ameghino also saw in the abundant inscriptive art of the Americas, including the engraved plaques of Argentina (and by implication the plaques of Portugal), “a complete system of ideographic writing that awaits decipherment and obscures facts of great importance” (Ameghino 1879:218–219). No prehistorian followed up on Ameghino’s intriguing suggestion, and few scholars even seemed to know about it. Ameghino was likely ignored by Iberian archaeologists at the time because of his controversial support for the idea that the world’s first mammalian faunas (including the Hominidae) were derived from Patagonian marsupials (Baffi and Torres 1997). The geologist Carlos Ribeiro (1813–1882) briefly described the plaques in Notícia de algumas estações e monumentos pré-históricos (1878–1880). Like Ameghino, he saw similarities between the Portuguese plaques and the slate plaques found in Argentina (Ribeiro 1878–1880:51). Ribeiro was undecided as to whether they were amulets or adornment (ibid.:50), and he did not offer an interpretation, though he suggested that the plaques probably had a restricted function owing to the fragility of their raw material. The French prehistorian Gabriel de Mortillet (1821–1898) included an illustration and brief description of a plaque in Musée préhistorique (Mortillet and Mortillet 1881) but offered no interpretation of it. Mortillet’s fellow countryman Émile Cartailhac (1845–1921) referred to the Iberian plaques in his important work Les âges préhistoriques de l’Espagne et du Portugal (Cartailhac 1886). He was the first to note the engraving styles of the plaques and particularly the different styles represented among the plaques from the cave site of Casa da Moura, but believed that all the plaques were produced by a “sure and skillful hand” (ibid.:97). He also noted that the perforations on the plaques showed signs of wear, suggesting that the plaques were worn for a long time (ibid.:98). Cartailhac, like Ribeiro, was undecided as to their function but believed that they had properties similar to those of objects of adornment and symbols of power. Like Simões, he employed an ethnographic approach and found comparable plaques made of slate both within Europe (from France) and in North America (from New Jersey) (ibid.:100). The first scholar to offer a major presentation and discussion of the Iberian plaques, including the first maps plotting their distribution, was the Portuguese prehistorian Sebastião Philippes Martins Estácio da Veiga (1828–1891). Through the publication of his four-volume opus Paleoethnologia: Antiguidades monumentaes do Algarve: Tempos prehistoricos (Veiga 1886–1891), Estácio da Veiga played a key role in late nineteenth century Portuguese archaeology. He devoted a chap22

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ter to the plaques, which at the time numbered fifty-six complete specimens and twenty-three fragments. Like Simões, Estácio da Veiga is cautious and conservative in interpreting the plaques, and his careful descriptions and lucid thoughtfulness in pursuing various lines of inquiry give his work an air of modernity. The plaques were clearly a source of nationalistic pride to Estácio da Veiga. All the known plaques were found in Portugal, as he announced in the first sentence of his chapter on the plaques: “This is the only country in Europe in which engraved slate plaques have yet been found” (Veiga 1887:429). Estácio da Veiga made a number of key observations on the manufacture and life history of the plaques, many of which were not developed in later works. For example, he seemed certain that a flint blade was used to make the engraving, though no experiments appear to have been conducted to prove this. Like Cartailhac, whose work he cited, Estácio da Veiga observed the wear on their perforations and noted a range in wear: some plaques showed the original drilling grooves, while in others the wear from a cord was evident. He also observed (ibid.:431) that each plaque was unique in its design and that the engraving styles were variable. Estácio da Veiga believed that the producers of the plaques did not invent their designs but imitated something that existed in nature or in industry that attracted their attention and taste. The form of the triangle, for example, seemed to have an important symbolism, and he vaguely suggested that crystals could be their design source. Estácio da Veiga was aware of Ameghino’s 1879 work and of his suggestion that the Portuguese plaques might contain “hieroglyphs,” but he dismissed this idea and did not see such lines and points in the Portuguese plaques. Estácio da Veiga complained that Ameghino did not publish images of the plaque he mentioned: “Science needs the demonstration of direct proof” (ibid.:448). Estácio da Veiga also considered the source or inspiration for the Portuguese plaques, but unlike later authors he was reluctant to assume an eastern or external origin. Indeed, he wrote that no symbol or artifact of Asian production had been found in any of the monuments (ibid.:444). In a passage characteristic of many late nineteenth century Portuguese scholars, in which nationalism and Portuguese saudade (nostalgia) came together, Estácio da Veiga mournfully observed: I believe there to be sufficient basis to state that the slate plaques and their ornamental engraving had their origin in this venerable land, which for seven centuries has been called Portugal, and in which today art, suffering a neglected dyspepsia, moves slowly along, almost inanimate and decrepit, toward all decadences in search of an epitaph. (ibid.:444)

Ex Oriente Lux, Ex Oriente Mater Until the late 1800s the engraved plaques, which were only known in Portugal, were largely viewed as an indigenous phenomenon. No prehistorian argued for 23

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their being inspired by eastern sources. Most writers focused on describing the plaques and on considering various aspects of their production, distribution, and dating and kept a variety of interpretative possibilities open. A turning point in their study occurred with the work of French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan (1857–1924). It was Morgan, in Recherches sur les origines de l’Égypte (Morgan 1897), who first explicitly—though casually—made a connection between the Portuguese plaques and those from the east, specifically Egypt. Morgan wrote about the similarities that he noted between engraved plaques found in Gébel-Tàrif and Beit-Allam in Egypt and those in Portugal. Later prehistorians, such as Vergílio Correia (1921:75), acknowledged that Morgan was the first to make this connection. The putative eastern origins of the Iberian plaques colored all later studies to a greater or lesser degree. The notion that the plaques had exogenous sources was probably not entirely due to Morgan’s work, however, because diff usionism was the dominant explanatory model for culture change throughout late nineteenth/ early twentieth century archaeology. In the late 1890s prehistorians also began to emphasize the religious and symbolic dimensions of the Iberian plaques. An important figure who contributed to this shift was the Portuguese ethnographer José Leite de Vasconcelos (1858–1941) (Figure 1.10). Vasconcelos first wrote about the plaques in his magisterial threevolume opus As religiões da Lusitânia (Vasconcelos 1897, although he also referred to them in Vasconcelos 1905, 1913). As in the case of Estácio da Veiga, the plaques were a source of some pride for Vasconcelos, who wrote that the plaques constituted a notable particularity of “our” prehistoric archaeology (Vasconcelos 1897:155). When he published As religiões, the plaques were still only known from Portugal. Vasconcelos took a relatively systematic approach to the plaques and argued that three issues needed to be considered: (1) their location and frequency, (2) the nature of their raw material, and (3) their design, compared with other contemporary or neighboring objects (ibid.:158). He was a careful observer of the plaques and considered some aspects of their biography. He noted, for example, that one plaque had been broken, refashioned into an axelike form, and reperforated (ibid.:166). Like Estácio da Veiga, whom he cited, he also noted the variation in wear on the perforations and suggested that this was due to differences in the length of time that the plaques had been displayed (ibid.:160). Because of their fragility, all the plaques must have been used relatively infrequently and only on solemn occasions (ibid.:159–160). Also like earlier authors, Vasconcelos observed differences in the style of engraving. He described the certainty of the hand that made a plaque from the site of Herdade da Ordem but also noted the “barbarism” of another plaque from the same site (ibid.:156–157). Vasconcelos was an ethnographer of his time, however, and unilineal evolutionism was the dominant paradigm. He was familiar with E. B. Tylor’s Primitive Culture (1871) (Vasconcelos 1897:159) and was clearly sympathetic to Tylor’s theories on the mentality of “primitive” (preliterate) peoples, for whom religion in general and animism in particular served to explain sleep, death, and dreams. Thus, despite the 24

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f ig u r e 1 . 10. Caricature of José Leite de Vasconcelos (with engraved plaque hanging from his wrist) by Francisco Valença, undated. Courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia.

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skill displayed by some of their makers: “We should always remember that we are dealing with people at a very low level of civilization: who used stone tools . . . who did not yet possess the art of writing, who had only mastered the skills of linear designs . . . People such as these could not elevate themselves to high philosophical concepts” (ibid.:169). In deciding whether the plaques were ornaments, insignia, or religious objects, Vasconcelos made the case for religious objects. He seemed vaguely dissatisfied with the idea of their being ornaments and found it difficult to imagine that they were insignia, given the primitive level of civilization of their producers (ibid.:158). In a later piece (1906), Vasconcelos considered the question of the origin of the plaques but was ambivalent in his thinking. On the one hand, he believed that “whether the plaques were originally from this country or came from outside cannot be known now” (Vasconcelos 1906:341). On the other hand, he had recently seen Egyptian plaques in the Kunstmuseum of Bonn that were similar to the Portuguese plaques and wrote in his notebook: “If I had found one in Portugal, I wouldn’t have distinguished it from our own!” (ibid.:341, note 2). Thus, until the early 1900s, prehistorians only contemplated the possibility of eastern origins for the Iberian plaques. With the publication of Joseph Déchelette’s “Essai sur la chronologie préhistorique de la péninsule ibérique” (1908) and Louis Siret’s Questions de chronologie et d’ethnographie ibériques (1913), however, prehistorians became more committed to the idea that the plaques were derived from eastern models. Joseph Déchelette (1862–1914) was a French prehistorian who excavated the Iron Age settlement of Bibracte, France (V. C. 1914:385), in addition to studying the prehistoric materials of the Iberian Peninsula. He remarked on the similarity between the “curious plaques of engraved schist” and predynastic Egyptian slate palettes (Déchelette 1908:229). The Siret brothers were more emphatic and explicit in their articulation of Late Neolithic Iberian cultures and those of the eastern Mediterranean. Louis Siret (1860–1934) was a Belgian mining engineer. With his brother Henri (1857–1934), he is best known for discovering hundreds of prehistoric sites in the Almería province of Spain (Siret and Siret 1887). In their 1887 work the Siret brothers developed their model for Iberian prehistory, in which changes in artifact assemblage corresponded to invasions and colonizations by different ethnic groups. The Eneolithic, the period to which the slate plaques were dated, corresponded to the period of Phoenician colonization. Thus, after a brief description of the plaques, Louis Siret concluded that the geometric-designed plaques displayed a stylized version of the mystical palm trees that had been found in the “more erudite art” of the Assyrians (Siret 1913:279–281). As the palm tree was a symbol of fertility in the East, so it was in the Iberian plaques (ibid.:282). Louis Siret was also the first to offer an explicit chronology for the plaques, although this chronology was tied to his theory of exogenous origins for Iberian prehistory. The oldest plaques were those that depicted the Assyrian palm tree, 26

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and these evolved into plaques with anthropomorphic features (ibid.:283). As Robert Chapman (1990:24) has made clear, however, Siret did acknowledge that there was no evidence for Phoenician activity along the Atlantic coast and seemed open to alternative explanations. Although later writers disagreed about the specifics of Siret’s ideas (such as his chronology and his interpretation of the designs as palm trees), the east Mediterranean origins of the plaques came to be a standard—and virtually unquestioned—feature of subsequent discussion. The Portuguese prehistorian Vergílio Correia (1888–1944) was the next to devote a significant inquiry to the Iberian plaques. In his article on the Iberian “plaqueidols” (Correia 1917), he described his motivations to write the article. Although he felt it might be premature to offer a major synthesis on the plaques, Correia was compelled to do so: If we note the great progress of prehistoric studies that has been achieved in Spain, an archaeological region with direct and intimate relations with our country, we cannot neglect to publish all the interesting documents that appear, which will work together to produce a more complete and rapid knowledge of Iberian prehistory. (Correia 1917:29)

In this quotation Correia echoed Simões’ concern with the inadequate state of affairs in Portuguese archaeology when compared to Spain (although he did not cite Simões). He lamented that the study of the plaques had been neglected and that few plaques had been illustrated, perhaps because they were so similar to each other (ibid.:29). Unlike many of his predecessors, Correia devoted little discussion to describing the plaques (which displayed a “primitive taste”) and their distribution. Correia seemed concerned with asserting his place in the historiography of plaque research, however. He stated that he was the first to call the plaques “what they simply are—idols or icons of prehistoric divinities” (Correia 1917:30). He expressed no doubt in proclaiming that this divinity was the same female divinity found in prehistoric France, Turkey, and Crete—and in hundreds of places along the Mediterranean basin (ibid.:35). Because of this belief, Correia placed the anthropomorphic plaques at the beginning of the plaque chronology and the geometric plaques later in the sequence (ibid.:33). This theme of retrogression—widely shared among European prehistorians—runs throughout Correia’s writings. In a later work he viewed the plaques as reflecting a “palpable manifestation of the decadence of Art after its prodigious development at the end of the Quaternary” (Correia 1921:77). Correia’s interpretation of the plaques as goddesses marks the beginning of nearly one hundred years of scholarship emphasizing the female qualities of the plaques. Correia seems to have been influenced by the views of the Swiss legal scholar Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–1887), although he did not cite Bachofen. In Das Mutterrecht (Mother Right) Bachofen argued that the original family structure 27

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was matriarchal and that the basis for the Christian worship of the Virgin Mary was to be found in the matriarchal societies of the ancient Near East and Europe (Bachofen 1861). Other scholars, including J. F. McLennan, also argued for this ancient matriarchy (Russell 1994). It is possible that many versions of this novel view were being broadly discussed throughout the scholarly community of Europe at the turn of the century. Whatever the original source of the notion, many later scholars such as Marija Gimbutas, Maria da Conceição Monteiro Rodrigues, and Victor Gonçalves maintained this concern with the plaques as ancient female divinities (as discussed below). The next writer to offer a major discussion of the Iberian plaques was the Polish ethnologist Eugeniusz Frankowski (1884–1962). As part of his broader study of the Iberian discoidal stelae, Frankowski contributed some unique interpretations of the plaques, which he saw as “most interesting documents of Prehistory” (Frankowski 1920:22). The plaques were not idols or divinities but representations of the dead (ibid.:23). No doubt due to his ethnographic training, Frankowski examined the Iberian plaques within a cross-cultural and anthropological framework. Drawing on comparative studies of the cultures of China, Egypt, and Borneo, he argued that there was a universal human need to provide the soul of the dead with an image of its body so that it could be housed and leave the living in peace. Thus to Frankowski, as to Correia (though for different reasons), these more anthropomorphic plaques evolved into the geometric plaques. Frankowski dismissed the suggestion that the geometric designs had some sort of symbolism but argued instead that they expressed a characteristic of the human figure or even clothes. For the first time in the historiography of plaque studies a scholar articulated the form and function of the plaques within a framework that was consistent with what was known ethnographically. Why Frankowski’s ideas never took hold in later writing is somewhat of a mystery, although he was known and cited by other scholars, such as María José Almagro Gorbea (1973), Isabel M. Gomes Lisboa (1985), and Victor Gonçalves (1999a). Indeed, Vergílio Correia and Frankowski were close friends (Frankowska 1989:28), and Correia (1921:75) even suggested that Frankowski’s ideas might have some potential. Correia did offer one explanation for the general reluctance among his colleagues to take on Frankowski’s ideas: Frankowski’s theory ran contrary to the popular idea of the time—promoted by Déchelette and others—of the “nude eastern goddess” (Correia 1921:83). Frankowski’s broad-sweeping ethnological approach may also have been difficult for some prehistorians to accept. For example, Correia (ibid.:75) suggested that all the plaques were painted (because paint had been found on some) and argued that there was no need to make comparisons with “Asian or African savages,” since there was a comparable practice in the pastoral art of the Portuguese Alentejo. It is perhaps also relevant to note that Frankowski had been confined to Spain between 1914 and 1920 (when he researched and wrote Estelas discoideas) and then returned to Poland after the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. His status as a nonarchaeologist, an ethnographer, and a Pole who did not main28

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tain a strong connection to the archaeology of the Iberian Peninsula after 1920 must also have hindered the incorporation of his ideas in the Spanish and Portuguese archaeological literature. The Swedish archaeologist Nils Åberg (1888–1957) briefly considered the Iberian plaques in his monographic study of the Iberian Eneolithic. He termed them “funerary idols” and, like Correia and Frankowski, believed that they “degenerated” from an anthropomorphic form to a more geometric style (Åberg 1921:36). Although he published his work in French, a language read by most European scholars, few later scholars cited his monograph.

The Age of Classification From the 1930s and through the 1980s many prehistorians devoted a great deal of energy to classifying the plaques. Hundreds of plaques were discovered during this active period in Iberian prehistory. While the Mother Goddess legacy endured, prehistorians paid greater attention to regional variation and began to explore alternative interpretations for the plaques. For example, Manuel Heleno, director of the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia in Lisbon from 1930 to 1964, questioned the orientalist theories of Déchelette and Siret and suggested that the plaques might have been representations of the dead or ancestors (Heleno 1932:25, in Lisboa 1985:181). The French priest and eminent Paleolithic prehistorian Abbé Henri Breuil (1877–1961) was the first to classify the Iberian plaques (Breuil 1935). He grouped them into four types: 1. plaques with the “head” and “shoulder” cut out, 2. plaques with the “head” cut out or engraved and arms engraved, 3. plaques with the “head” cut out and without arms, and 4. plaques with the “head” engraved.

Breuil believed that various types could be found within one series, but he considered this a good preliminary classification. Like many prehistorians of his time, he continued to argue for an eastern origin of the plaques. Plaque studies—and indeed the study of the Late Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula—made their greatest advance with the prodigious efforts of the German prehistorians Georg and Vera Leisner. Over a period of nearly forty years the couple surveyed, mapped, catalogued, and illustrated the plans and contents of hundreds of Iberian megaliths. Their work was published in a series of six copiously illustrated volumes (Leisner and Leisner 1943, 1951, 1956, 1959; Leisner 1965, 1998), which constitute the most important source of information on the Iberian plaques and on the Late Neolithic of Iberia in general. Over four hundred plaques were illustrated in their volumes. 29

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While not focusing their efforts on the plaques themselves, the Leisners offered a classification of them as well as an interpretation of their form and chronology. They classified these engraved objects into four groups: (1) plaques with shoulders, (2) trapezoidal plaques with facelike decoration, (3) purely geometric plaques, and (4) bacula (Leisner and Leisner 1951:116). The bacula are curved slate objects, also engraved with geometric designs and also found in burials of the Late Neolithic (see Chapter 4). The Leisners viewed the plaques as fundamentally religious objects, probably idols (ibid.:130). The Leisners saw evidence of both indigenous and exogenous influences in the plaques. In contrast to many other scholars, they argued that the plaques with purely geometric forms were the earliest in the sequence. Their designs reflected the symbolic substitution of the axe and adze form and were found on earlier local ceramics. As Iberia came under increased influence from the east Mediterranean, the plaques evolved into more anthropomorphic forms and designs. As evidence of this contact, the Leisners cited the high distribution of anthropomorphic plaques along the Tagus riverway, which would have been a major corridor of influence. But the transition from geometric plaques to anthropomorphic plaques was not a clean and abrupt one: they suggested that the two forms existed at the same time. Like some prehistorians before them, the Leisners also noted the engraving styles of the plaques and observed that some of the plaques were so alike that they appeared to have been produced by the same hand (ibid.:115). They did not carry out any systematic studies of plaques by style. Although most of their publications were in German (with the exception of their 1951 study, which was translated into Portuguese), the Leisners’ work was (and is) widely admired and cited regularly by Portuguese and Spanish scholars. Their long stay in Spain and Portugal and their affiliation with the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid integrated the Leisners and their research fully in the fabric of Iberian archaeology. The Portuguese prehistorian Luis de Albuquerque e Castro reiterated many previous scholars’ ideas about the plaques in a short article published in Lucerna (Castro 1964). Castro did not doubt that the plaques were anthropomorphic, but he showed less certainty as to whether they were related to purification rites or were idols or divinities (ibid.:100). One of his most notable contributions was carrying out experiments in engraving slate, using tools made of flint, quartz, copper, and hardened bronze (ibid.: 96). He noted that the lines made with the quartz and flint tools resisted wear better than the lines made by the other tools. In general Castro also seemed more attuned than previous scholars to the manufacturing style and technique, arguing that these plaques “constitute an artistic display, demonstrating, at times, a high degree of perfection and firmness in the engraver’s hand” (ibid.:96–97). Another scholar who engaged with the Iberian plaques, although she was rarely cited in the Iberian archaeological literature, was the Lithuanian-American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994). Like many before her, Gimbutas believed that the Iberian plaques were manifestations of the great Mother Goddess, although 30

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she interpreted them as representing her form as the owl goddess (Gimbutas 1974, 1991). As examples, she included images of two plaques, one with ocular features and one with purely geometric features (Gimbutas 1991:297–299). Unfortunately, Gimbutas incorrectly cited the provenance of the plaques. For example, one of the plaques that she recorded as being from Los Millares in Spain was actually from Mértola in Portugal (Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, no. 5, 3). Gimbutas is best known for her synthetic and sweeping views of European prehistory, so this inattentiveness to detail is not surprising; but it does not necessarily present a challenge to her model. Few Iberianist scholars working on the engraved plaques have cited her work (with the exception of Rodrigues 1986a, 1986b; see below). This is probably because she published in English and did not publish in Portuguese or Spanish archaeological journals. In 1973 the Spanish archaeologist María José Almagro Gorbea included a study of the plaques within her major work devoted to the Late Neolithic idols of Iberia, with which the plaques share many features (for example, ocular motifs). Like many of her predecessors, Almagro Gorbea (1973:181) betrayed a pan-Iberian pride in the plaques, stating that “they are of great originality and rich in decorative inspiration, constituting a typically Iberian idol, with its own personality.”  She was the first to present an illustrated catalogue of the plaques, which included a classification scheme, information on provenance and raw materials, and distribution maps. There are a number of discrepancies between her catalogue and information found in earlier works, however, and her illustrations are often rather sketchy (and sometimes inaccurate) copies of the fine illustrations in the Leisners’ publications. Her work also contains inconsistencies with earlier primary reports of plaques. For example, a plaque she cited from Vale de Rodrigo (Almagro Gorbea 1973: Fig. 43, 80) had been published by Abel Viana as being from Folha da Amendoeira (Viana 1953: Fig. 21). Almagro Gorbea classified the plaques (which as a group constitute her Type D idols) into six subtypes: a. plaques without decoration; b. plaques with just the holes of the eyes engraved; c. plaques with simple geometric decoration; d. plaques with incised decoration with light/dark contrasts; e. plaques decorated with anthropomorphic designs in relief; f. ceramic plaques with four perforations.

It is unclear why such a system was created and what purpose it served. The significance of these groups was not made explicit. Almagro Gorbea stated that subtypes (a), (b), and (c) were the most widely distributed in the peninsula, while groups (d) and (e) (although quite frequent) were only found in the southwest 31

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region of the peninsula. Subtype (d) was further subdivided by the form of the plaque, and all the plaques can be classified by the geometric design or designs. In interpreting the plaques as well as the other engraved idols of the megalithic period of Iberia, Almagro Gorbea employed a normative approach, emphasizing the similarities between the plaques while not explaining their variability. In this way the plaques reveal a common decorative grammar, which signified to Almagro Gorbea that they represented a universal deity (ibid.:324). This deity possesses the features of a bird. Because the geometric motifs on these plaques appear to refer to aquatic themes (the meander signifies the water that flows, the zigzag or the checkerboard signifies the uterus or fields, etc.; ibid.:326), she considered it an aquatic bird. Aquatic birds would be apt symbols, Almagro Gorbea argued, because of the strong relationship between water and fertility for agricultural peoples. In discussing their chronology (ibid.:339–340), Almagro Gorbea referred to the similarities of the plaques with east Mediterranean idols, such as those from Neolithic Haçilar and Mersin in Anatolia. She suggested that the undecorated or most simply decorated plaques were the earliest and arrived in Iberia through external influences. Perhaps through evolution or again through external influences, they became the elaborately decorated plaques that are most typical of the Portuguese sites, which were followed by a return to more simply decorated plaques. Thus her six subtypes roughly corresponded to a chronological sequence, with subtype (a) plaques being the earliest and subtype (f) being the most recent. This was an entirely hypothetical sequence, however, and not based on any stratigraphic evidence. One attempt to challenge the traditional empirico-functionalist methodology of classifying the Iberian plaques was carried out by the Portuguese archaeologists Ana Maria and Jorge Sá Pinto (Pinto and Pinto 1979), who employed a classification methodology espoused by Jean-Claude Gardin (1967). In essence Gardin proposed the development of classification systems in archaeology that avoided natural language (coding based on apparent similarity to body parts, animals, celestial bodies, etc.); but he did not pretend to be scientific, because no experiments could be constructed a priori to validate a coding system. Instead he argued for an intermediate ground and the development of artificial codes that were based in part on a priori conventions and universally acceptable descriptive systems (not cognitive systems) (Gardin 1967:27). Thus the Pintos critiqued traditional classifications of the plaques, such as those published by Correia (1921) and the Leisners (1951), for their use of “ambiguous terms,” based on “a fertile imagination or excessively facile analogies” (Pinto and Pinto 1979:184). They argued against the use of suggestive terms such as “eyes,” “arms,” and “tattoos,” which conflated description and interpretation. Interestingly, the Pintos also lamented the “lack of support given to us by the most important museums in the country which house slate plaques from Portuguese tombs of a number that is difficult to calculate” (ibid.:183). As a result, their study only included around 150 plaques, found largely in the Leisners’ 1951 publica32

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tion. Although their schema moved in the direction of objectivity and statistical rigor, the Pintos never addressed what questions it would answer. Indeed, the ultimate purpose of their classification system was never confronted, and it was never followed up in any of their subsequent research. In 1985 the Portuguese prehistorian and Cambridge doctoral student Isabel Gomes Lisboa wrote an important and provocative article on the plaques. She offered one of the most serious critiques of their interpretations as Mother Goddesses (Lisboa 1985). Her strongest critiques were leveled at the emphasis by previous scholars on plaque types that in reality constitute a small sample of the totality, such as composite plaques and those with ocular motifs. Furthermore, she argued that there was no evidence to support the idea that the circles represented eyes or that they were the eyes of women. Finally, she pointed out that no data were available on which to base their assumed chronological sequence (that is, from figurative to geometric). Lisboa argued that the plaques needed to be viewed as ordered and meaningful vehicles that communicated messages. She was not concerned with deciphering the precise meaning or the symbolism of the plaques. Rather, she was interested in the actions behind the production and ritual display of the plaques, arguing that “the schist plaques [are] part of a symbolic structure in which status is legitimised through the manipulation of objects which transmit messages relative to the control of the cosmos, and indirectly to power” (Lisboa 1985:195). Lisboa did note that the form, decoration, and low degree of wear suggested that the plaques had a “heraldic function,” though it was collective in nature, because they are sometimes found without association with particular individuals (e.g., at Lapa do Fumo). Unfortunately, this novel idea was never developed or tested. Lisboa’s thesis was refreshing in that it moved away from analyses of what the plaques may have represented and focused on how they may have functioned. Curiously, Lisboa’s article has never been cited by Portuguese or Spanish archaeologists writing on the plaques, perhaps because of its publication in English in a relatively inaccessible (at the time) British journal, her Cambridge education, and the fact that her doctoral thesis on the Iberian plaques remains unpublished. The theme of heraldry brought up in Lisboa’s article was echoed independently by the American anthropologists Edmund Carpenter and Carl Schuster (1988) in their voluminous cross-cultural study of social symbolism. As with all the objects in their study, Carpenter and Schuster focused exclusively on the design of the Iberian plaques and saw similarities between their designs and European heraldry and textiles. Thus the Iberian plaques were seen as “clothed in heraldic devices” (Carpenter and Schuster 1988:360). Although their work suffered because of its lack of concern for cultural or historical context, it at least provided some heuristic potential, as did Lisboa’s work. Like Lisboa’s work, Carpenter and Schuster’s book has not had any impact in later Spanish and Portuguese scholarship on the plaques, probably because they published in English and in non-Iberian media and took an approach which diverged from seeing the plaques as primarily female deities. 33

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Portuguese scholar Maria da Conceição Monteiro Rodrigues wrote a twovolume doctoral thesis on the plaques from the Alto Alentejo region of Portugal (Rodrigues 1986a, 1986b). She created a coding system inspired by Gardin’s approach for the decorative elements on the plaques then applied quantitative analyses (primarily correspondence analyses) to classify them. Her thesis also included an illustrated catalogue of the 250 plaques in her analyses. Although Rodrigues attempted to employ a systematic approach to classifying the plaques, the interpretations that followed reiterated many of the same themes that earlier writers had articulated. Citing the work of Gimbutas, she concluded that the plaques represented the Mediterranean Magna Mater, the Mother Goddess. Inspired by structuralism, Rodrigues interpreted the tripartite compositional structure of the plaques as reflecting a tripartite division of ancient Iberian cosmology, in which the earth separated the heaven and the lower world. In an attempt to articulate the macrocosmos and the microcosmos, she suggested that the geometric elements and continuous repetitions transmitted a spirit of solidarity. Rodrigues situated the plaques within the sociopolitical world of ancient Iberia and suggested that surplus production must have existed in order for some specialists to produce these plaques. No experiments were conducted, however, to determine the actual length of time that was required to manufacture and decorate the plaques. The Spanish archaeologist Primitiva Bueno Ramírez (1992) is one scholar who has broken away from explaining the variability of plaques in purely chronological terms and deemphasized their representation as a Mother Goddess. In an important article published in French in L’Anthropologie, she argued that their variability can be partially explained in terms of the regional expression of local production or exchange systems. Her classification system was based on two major plaque types: Type A and Type B. Type A plaques have anthropomorphic features and are related to the statue-menhirs of the peninsula. Type B plaques are nonanthropomorphic and trapezoidal or rectangular in form. Bueno Ramírez justified this distinction. Type A plaques have a sculptural quality and are engraved on two sides. They are also made of nonslate materials like sandstone and are fairly restricted geographically. Type B plaques, in contrast, are generally geometric, engraved on one side, made of slate, and more extensively dispersed. Rather than seeing the two plaque types as having two different meanings, Bueno Ramírez suggested that they were regional expressions of the anthropomorphic figure. She drew on contemporary iconography on stelae, rock art, and engraved bone idols to support this model. Bueno Ramírez recognized the variability among the plaques; for example, the geometric plaques in Group B were subdivided into seventeen subtypes. She did not offer an explanation, however, for their distribution and differentiation. Cautiously, she suggested that depicting the human figure became important during this period in Iberian prehistory, when humans assumed increasing control of their environment (Bueno Ramírez 1992:598). The assumption that the Iberian plaques represent a human being remains unquestioned by one of the most active plaque scholars today, the Portuguese archae34

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ologist Victor dos Santos Gonçalves. His interpretation of the plaques was succinctly articulated: “Personally I do not hesitate to accept that they represent a figure of one (or more) female divinity or divinities, more specifically, the Mother Goddess, for reasons that seem indisputable to me” (Gonçalves 1999a:114). Support for his model, he argued, is to be found in the iconographic uniformity of the plaques, their uniform female symbolism, and the specific case of a plaque from Lapa do Bugio, in which an anthropomorph is depicted inside another anthropomorph and bears a resemblance to other Mother Goddess iconography from the Mediterranean. Despite this assurance, Gonçalves noted that a number of key questions remained to be addressed, including the chronological and cultural differences between the geometric plaques and the anthropomorphs and between those made on schist and slate and those made of sandstone, when the plaques were deposited, and their absolute chronology. Once again the idea of a Mother Goddess has been resurrected. I published my first article on the plaques in the Portuguese journal Revista Portuguesa de Arqueologia (Lillios 2002). I proposed an alternative view of the plaques (which I develop more fully in this book): that at least some of them were heraldic emblems, as Lisboa had suggested. In this piece and others (Lillios 2003, 2004b), I argued that the plaques’ heterogeneity needed greater attention and that it was necessary to develop a more integrated understanding of their iconography, meaning, and function. Early in my studies it also became clear that any scholarly analysis of the plaques required a comprehensive catalogue that could be searched, queried, and updated as new plaques were discovered. With this aim, I created The Engraved Stone Plaque Registry and Inquiry Tool (ESPRIT) (Lillios 2004a). ESPRIT is an online comprehensive catalogue of the Iberian plaques—both those that have been published and those that remain unpublished in museum collections. Currently ESPRIT has over 1,300 plaques catalogued from over 200 sites in Portugal and Spain. This corpus includes the vast majority of the published plaques as well as hundreds of unpublished plaques that I photographed on various study trips. It was important to examine the plaques firsthand in order to check the accuracy of the published illustrations and to determine whether these illustrations were faithful reproductions of the plaques’ styles, not those of the archaeological illustrator. Indeed, the vast majority of published illustrations proved to be extremely faithful renderings, with only a few notable inaccuracies (Figure 1.11). Color photographs and/or scanned black-and-white drawings are therefore included for each plaque. ESPRIT also contains fields for the plaques’ size, weight, form, design, and find context as well as qualitative information, such as stylistic features and production errors. Scholars and students can easily browse for plaques by geographic region, museum, and type or search for specific criteria in the data fields. The hardcopy format and relatively incomplete nature of previous catalogues made it difficult to add to these catalogues and carry out quantitative or qualitative analyses, including spatial and correlation analyses. Thus, in addition to being free and easy to use 35

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f ig u r e 1 . 1 1 . Photograph and drawing of plaque from Aljezur (Faro, Portugal). a, Photograph by author. Courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia. b, Illustration of plaque. The illustrator drew in some chevrons on the right side of the plaque even though they do not appear on the actual plaque.

for scholars anywhere in the world, ESPRIT allows me to update the catalogue with new finds (which a hardcopy book would not allow). The plaques in ESPRIT are the empirical basis for my analyses and interpretations in this book. Beginning in 2003 (and in response to my 2002 article), Gonçalves initiated a series of publications devoted to the plaques. The first was on the “mad plaque syndrome” (Gonçalves 2003a). This was a detailed examination of those relatively rare though intriguing plaques with asymmetrical designs. Gonçalves interpreted these as reflecting the breakdown of societies at the end of the third millennium BC in southwestern Iberia. Also of note is his analysis of the plaques’ paginação or chaîne opératoire (operational sequence) to understand their engraving sequences. This was the first attempt by any scholar to break down the technical steps in the manufacture of the plaques—in this case, to demonstrate that the asymmetry was part of an intentional plan and not an accident. More relevant to this historiographic discussion, however, is Gonçalves’ reiteration that the plaques represent a female divinity. A similar stance (and further use of the chaîne opératoire method) was developed in his monograph on the excavations at Anta 3 da Herdade de Santa Margarida (Gonçalves 2003b). Gonçalves’ most recent work has been devoted to Placa Nostra, an ambitious 36

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project carried out with his students Marco Andrade and André Pereira. Their aim is to register and draw all the engraved plaques in the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia as well as those from many important sites and even plaques found in museums outside Portugal (Gonçalves, Andrade, and Pereira 2004a). An impressive series of publications has resulted from this initiative. This includes a study of the reused plaques from Évora (Gonçalves, Pereira, and Andrade 2003) and the plaques from S. Paulo 2 (Gonçalves, Andrade, and Pereira 2004a), Tojal de Vila Chã (Gonçalves, Andrade, and Pereira 2004b), Aljezur (Gonçalves 2004), and Cabacinhitos (Gonçalves, Pereira, and Andrade 2005). The study of the Iberian plaques has clearly reached an exciting stage, in which diverse ideas are being debated, however tentatively. Equally important are the two major plaque cataloguing projects underway—ESPRIT and Placa Nostra. However much they may overlap in their aims and contents, they are ultimately major strides in the direction of making known the true number and diversity of the plaques. The next chapter takes a closer look at this diversity.

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ike an old friend, each plaque has something reassuringly familiar about it. But, like old friends, the plaques can also bear startling surprises. Sometimes a plaque displays a unique combination of motifs. Sometimes it exhibits a bizarre or highly idiosyncratic style. And sometimes it reveals an unusually high level of technical precision and artistic finesse. In this chapter I wish to convey some of this dazzling variety in the formal design and style of the plaques. It is this tension between insistent uniformity and bold idiosyncrasy that makes the Iberian plaques so compelling and offers, I suggest, a key to understanding them.

for m a l va r i a bi l i t y The engraved stone plaques of Iberia vary in a number of formal ways, including their shape, number of perforations, number of sides that are engraved, compositional structure, and design. They can be rectangular, trapezoidal, or composite in shape (Figure 2.1). The plaques also differ in their number of perforations. Most have one or two, some have none, and a few have three or four (Figure 2.2). The plaques also vary in the number of sides that are engraved (Figure 2.3). Most are engraved on one side (Figure 2.3b), while some are engraved on both sides (Fig. 2.3c and d). A few plaques are not engraved at all (Figure 2.3a), but it is unknown whether they were just unfinished, or finished and meant to be unengraved, or originally painted but the coloring has disappeared. Of those that are engraved on both sides, we can distinguish between two types. One set of plaques is engraved in different and completed designs on both sides, which seem to suggest two views—the “front” and the “back” of an object (Figure 2.3c and d) or being. Some two-sided plaques, however, have what appears to be a sketch on one side, while the other side shows a finished version of the same or a similar design (Figure 2.4a–h). In these pieces and in the analysis of their chaînes opératoires (discussed in more detail in Chapter 3) we can detect glimpses of the intentionality of their ancient artisans (Leroi-Gourhan 1993). The finished or obverse side of a plaque from La Pizarrilla, for example, is divided into a top and bottom design

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f ig u r e 2 . 1 . Plaque shapes. a, Sobreira (Portalegre, Portugal). b, Galvões (Évora, Portugal). c, Portimão (Faro, Portugal).

field (Figure 2.4a and b). The top has vertical-angled and hatched straps, three on each side. The base is divided into five vertical fields and is decorated with six horizontal registers of repeating chevrons. The reverse shows the dividing line between the top and base, unfilled straps on the top, and four vertical lines on the base, which have been sketchily and partially outlined with chevrons, some hatched, some unhatched. Similar sketches, partially completed, occur in plaques from Galvões (Figure 2.4e and f) and La Pijotilla 2 (Figure 2.4g and h). In a plaque from Dolmen das Conchadas (Figure 2.4c and d), we have a most intriguing situation. This plaque has a top and base field, with the top decorated with two “fishnet” patterns and the base divided into three horizontal registers filled with triangles (some with the apices pointing to the top, others to the bottom). The reverse has four engraved horizontal lines but no design elements. If we compare the number of these horizontal guiding lines to the finished side, we see that the finished side has only three such guiding lines. The obverse appears to be a first attempt to produce the plaque; but once the engraver realized that the incorrect number of horizontal guiding lines had been created, the side was abandoned and the other side used for the engraving. The unfinished side, had it been finished, could have produced an aesthetically pleasing plaque, although the registers are a bit irregular. But its abandonment suggests that the engraver was not only concerned with regularity and balance. This evidence indicates that the number of horizontal register lines was important for the engravers. These registers were not just created to fill up space, and the regularity of their spacing was not always prioritized. When archaeologists presume to know the intentionality of ancient peoples they are almost always entering 39

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f ig u r e 2 .2 . Variation in number of perforations. a, Passo 1 (Évora, Portugal). b, Brissos 6 (Évora, Portugal). c, Herdade da Ordem 1 (Portalegre, Portugal). d, Prado de Lácara (Badajoz, Spain). e, Marvão (Portalegre, Portugal).

into murky waters. But sometimes, in rare cases, they are lucky. When mistakes that occurred in manufacture and were revised can be indisputably demonstrated through a sequence of operational steps, I believe that we can indeed speak about intentionality with some degree of confidence. Those plaques that show sketching and corrections provide critical clues to our understanding of the plaques and remind us that we must be attuned to both their subjective qualities and their more quantitatively approachable features. In their compositional structure—in the organization of their design elements— the plaques fall into three groups (Figure 2.5a–c). Some plaques are divided into two design fields clearly separated by a horizontal line or a set of bands (Figure

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f ig u r e 2 .3 . Variation in number of sides engraved. a, Ferreirinhos (Castelo Branco, Portugal). b, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal). c and d, Obverse and reverse of plaque from Cueva de la Mora (Huelva, Spain).

f ig u r e 2 . 4 . Two-sided plaques with sketches. a and b, plaque (obverse and reverse) from La Pizarrilla (Badajoz, Spain). c and d, plaque (obverse and reverse) from Dolmen das Conchadas (Lisbon, Portugal). e and f, plaque (obverse and reverse) from Galvões (Évora, Portugal). g and h, plaque (obverse and reverse) from La Pijotilla 2 (Badajoz, Spain).

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f ig u r e 2 .5. Variation in plaque compositional structures. a, Cebolinho 1 (Évora, Portugal). b, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal). c, Tumulus de Jeromigo (Évora, Portugal).

2.5a). These are what I have termed “bipartite” in structure. In another group, the top and base are not separated by a horizontal line, although an unengraved triangular field is maintained near the perforation; these are “transitional” (Figure 2.5b). In “unipartite” plaques, the plaque as a whole is used as a continuous design field, and the perforations are often created over the design (Figure 2.5c). In formal terms, the plaques also vary in their symmetry (Washburn and Crowe 1988, 2004) (Figure 2.6a–d). Most are symmetrical along one axis—the vertical axis. Some, however, seem intentionally to break with that symmetry to produce some very curious asymmetrical designs (Figure 2.6a–c). These deliberately asymmetrical designs appear to be further evidence that the designs on these plaques signified something to the engravers and to those people who were meant to view the plaques. In rare cases, the plaques are symmetrical along both their vertical and horizontal axes, and the few that exist are quite stunning (Figure 2.6d). Overall, the vocabulary of the plaques consists of a relatively limited set of repeating design elements, although the myriad ways in which these design elements are oriented, organized compositionally, and combined produce a bewildering variety of designs. The most common design element and also the most variably depicted is the triangle. Triangles were fully hatched or “hollowed out” and oriented with their apices pointing upward, downward, or to the side (Figure 2.7a–e). Other common motifs include chevrons (Figure 2.8a and b), zigzags (Fig. 2.8c), checkerboards (Fig. 2.8d), herringbone (Fig. 2.8e), and vertical bands (Fig. 2.8f). The ways in which these motifs are combined are most intriguing. Triangles are found with all the other motifs (Figure 2.9a–d), while the other motifs are rarely found with other nontriangle elements. Perhaps plaques with these particular combinations have yet to be discovered; perhaps they were never made.

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f ig u r e 2 .6. Plaque asymmetries and symmetries. a, Dolmen das Conchadas (Lisbon, Portugal). b, Cabeço da Arruda (Lisbon, Portugal). c, Vale de Rodrigo 1 (Évora, Portugal). d, Herdade da Ordem 1 (Portalegre, Portugal).

f ig u r e 2 .7. Variability in triangle motif in plaques. a, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). b, Cabeças (Évora, Portugal). c, Dolmen das Conchadas (Lisbon, Portugal). d, Casa Branca (Évora, Portugal). e, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal).

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f ig u r e 2 .8. Other plaque motifs. a, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). b, Escoural (Évora, Portugal). c, Monte Velho (Beja, Portugal). d, Vale de Rodrigo 1 (Évora, Portugal). e, Santiago Maior (Évora, Portugal). f, Carvão (Évora, Portugal).

f ig u r e 2 .9. Hybrid plaques with triangles. a, Santa Margarida 1 (Évora, Portugal). b, Herdade da Ordem 1 (Portalegre, Portugal). c, Vale de Rodrigo 1 (Évora, Portugal). d, Galvões (Évora, Portugal).

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f ig u r e 2 . 10. Plaques with unusual checkerboard patterning. a, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal). b, Caeira 7 (Évora, Portugal).

As with asymmetrical plaques and those rare sketches, there are indications on some plaques that the design elements and specifically their iterations on a register may have been important features. On two plaques from the area of Évora, we see such design “irregularities” (Figure 2.10a and b). The plaque in Figure 2.10a, for example, has six registers of a checkerboard pattern created by engraving horizontal and vertical guiding lines. Curiously, however, on the fifth (and possibly also the sixth) register some of the squares were further subdivided and partly hatched. It is difficult to know exactly why this was done, but it may have been necessary to subdivide the element fields to achieve a specific number of filled squares, even though the symmetry of the plaque was disturbed.

s t y l is t ic va r i a bi l i t y In addition to formal variability, the plaques also differ in their stylistic features. Prehistorians such as Vasconcelos (1897), the Leisners (1951), and Castro (1964) noticed this quality of the plaques, although they never developed the implications of this observation. This quality of the plaques is certainly more difficult to describe unambiguously than are the formal qualities of the plaques discussed 45

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f ig u r e 2 . 1 1 . Plaques with single-line hatching. a, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal). b, Mértola (Beja, Portugal). c, Passo 1 (Évora, Portugal).

above. Without a searchable catalogue like ESPRIT it would be an exceedingly time-consuming task to search for plaques by style. Indeed, what style is, how it should be defined, and what it signifies in terms of human behavior are perennially thorny issues in archaeology (Sackett 1977, 1982, 1986; Wobst 1977; Wiessner 1983; Hegmon 1992; Parmentier 1997; Dietler and Herbich 1998). In my analysis of the plaques, the distinctions made by Polly Wiessner (1983) between emblemic and assertive style have been the most helpful. For Wiessner, emblemic style is a distinctive quality, design, or form that has a clear and conscious referent. Emblemic style would appear to be contained in the plaques’ compositional structure and design elements, as the corrections and emendations suggest. Assertive style, in contrast, is the variability reflecting the personal idiosyncrasies of the artisans. The discussion in the following section illustrates assertive style or what I simply call “style” here. This style seems to reflect the particular tastes of individual engravers, workshops, or regional traditions. While they may have communicated something symbolically to the viewer, they do not appear to have been as deliberately executed to function in this way, for the most part. Some of the stylistic distinctions among the plaques include: 1. Single-line hatching (Figure 2.11a–c) vs. double hatching (the predominant type of design fill). For most of these cases, the number of registers is rather high (over ten), the number of design elements high, and the size of these elements small, so the single hatching may simply be a technical adjustment to hatching a significantly large number of small design fields (over a hundred). 2. Framing (Figure 2.12a, b). In plaques that are framed, a line is engraved along the left and/or the right side, within which the registers of elements are created. The vast majority of plaques are not framed. 46

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f ig u r e 2 . 1 2 . Plaques with framing. a, Dolmen das Conchadas (Lisbon, Portugal). b, Cabeço da Arruda (Lisbon, Portugal).

3. Straightness, regularity, and orthogonality of lines (Figure 2.13a–g). There is an enormous range of control and regularity in the way that the registers and other guiding lines on the plaques are engraved. Some engravers were apparently highly skilled and sure-handed and could produce evenly-spaced registers (Figure 2.13a–d). Others were not as concerned with this feature or were not as skilled (Figure 2.13e–g). 4. Diagonality or slantedness of design elements (Figure 2.14a–f ). Variations in this feature are most pronounced in plaques with triangles. Most engravers seemed concerned to create triangles that were symmetrical. In some plaques, however, the triangles lean to the left (Figure 2.14a and b); in others, to the right (2.14c and d); and in others, in both directions (2.14e and f ). 5. Strap curvature (Figure 2.15a–c). The straps in bipartite plaques show a great deal of variation in their curvature. Some are straight (Figure 2.15a), while others are gently curved (Figure 2.15b), and still others are highly curved (Figure 2.15c). The plaques with highly curved straps are only found in Évora and Portalegre, while those with straight straps occur wherever bipartite plaques are found. 47

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f ig u r e 2 . 13 . Regularities and irregularities in plaques. a, Horta Velha do Reguengo (Portalegre, Portugal). b, Aljezur (Faro, Portugal). c, Escoural (Évora, Portugal). d, Aljezur (Faro, Portugal). e, Brissos 6 (Évora, Portugal). f, Velada (Évora, Portugal). g, Dolmen das Conchadas (Lisbon, Portugal).

6. Ambiguous field/ground. Identifying this stylistic feature arose out of the difficulty I faced in counting the design element iterations for some plaques. For most, it seemed clear that producing well-formed and evenly spaced hatched elements was prioritized. In others (Figure 2.16a–c), however, it appeared that the unengraved elements were prioritized, because they were far more regular than the engraved elements. Thus, which was the field and which was the ground is ambiguous. It seems that engravers differed in what they prioritized and regularized. 7. Finally, plaques of one class display a kind of stylistic variability that appears to be more deliberate than the above-mentioned variation yet is not formalized and repetitive enough to constitute a formal type in itself. The engravers of these plaques have taken a standardized formula for the plaques and modified it in most ingenuous ways (Figure 2.17a–c).

The plaque in Figure 2.17a, for example, has a playful ambiguity in its compositional structure. Although the plaque has an engraved line dividing the top and base (suggestive of a bipartite plaque), the entire top field is filled with a chevron

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f ig u r e 2 . 1 4 . Diagonality of triangle elements in plaques. a, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). b, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). c, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). d, Folha da Amendoeira (Beja, Portugal). e, Granja de Céspedes (Badajoz, Spain). f, Granja de Céspedes (Badajoz, Spain).

f ig u r e 2 . 15. Variability in strap curvature. a, Pedra Branca (Setúbal, Portugal). b, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). c, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal).

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f ig u r e 2 . 16. Plaques with ambiguous field/ground. a, Cavaleiros (Portalegre, Portugal). b, Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon, Portugal). c, Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon, Portugal).

f ig u r e 2 . 1 7. Plaques with idiosyncratic designs. a, Alapraia (Lisbon, Portugal). b, Aljezur (Faro, Portugal). c, Folha da Amendoeira (Beja, Portugal).

pattern. The plaque in Figure 2.17b is Transitional, made up of repeating chevron registers, with the right and left half offset vertically by one register to produce an interesting asymmetry. Toward the top of the plaque the artist has allowed one of the unfilled registers to cross over the vertical axis to create a dramatic swish effect. The author of the plaque in Figure 2.17c seems to have deliberately broken

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all the rules of design. This is basically a bipartite plaque. The base design aggressively flaunts any kind of symmetry, however, by having the vertical bands emerge as diagonals, as though the bands were long pieces of fabric blowing in the wind. At the top of the plaque, where either vertical straps (oriented downward toward the central axis) or horizontal straps typically are drawn, this engraver has created straps that are oriented upward toward the central axis. I cannot help seeing a brazen swagger and a bold individualism in this plaque. Its exceptionality seems to define the rules of plaque design. It remains one of my favorites.

t h e pl aqu e t y pe s Now that we have reviewed some of the formal and stylistic variation of the engraved plaques, we can turn to examining the plaques as groups. Based on patterned associations in the plaques’ form, sidedness, compositional structure, and design elements, eight formal plaque types can be identified: I. Classic II. Transitional III. Hoe IV. Unipartite V. Rug VI. Strappy VII. Biomorph Simple VIII. Biomorph Whiskered

I have organized the plaque types by their compositional structure. Type I (the Classic plaques) are bipartite. Types II and III (the Transitional and Hoe plaques) are transitional. Types V to VIII (the Rug, Strappy, and Biomorph plaques) are unipartite. As discussed in Chapter 1, Pinto and Pinto (1979) critiqued the use of “facile analogies” in the naming of Iberian plaque types. In general I agree with their argument. Yet, as I developed this classification system, I found it unwieldy and rather disingenuous of me to select names for some of these types without suggesting what I thought they evoked. Therefore for Types III, V, and VI I have given names that are evocative of “real” things (hoes, rugs, and straps). I was more cautious in the naming of the plaques that appeared to be “beings” and that have for so long been called Goddess representations. I have termed these Biomorphs. While they seem to suggest living beings with eyes and appendages, they are ambiguous in terms of referencing animals, humans, or some sort of hybrid be-

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ing. I discuss the ambiguous qualities of these more representational plaques in Chapter 4. In addition to these eight formal types, two other plaque classes were difficult to assign to a formal type. The Style Variant plaques (Type IX) are plaques done in a sketchy style that precluded their classification as a formal design type. The Recycled plaques (Type X) were recycled fragments of other plaques, which are also difficult to type formally due to their fragmented nature. Approximately 20 percent of the plaques that were catalogued could not be classified because of their fragmentary nature. While these plaques are not very useful for the purposes of formal analyses, they could potentially be analyzed in the future to help understand the life histories of the plaques. For example, we know from the Recycled plaques that some plaques were refashioned after being fragmented. It seems quite possible that these Recycled plaques (and possibly other plaques) were brought into different tombs. One could conceivably analyze these unknowns to determine if there are conjoining pieces and in this way identify plaques that were moved or circulated. In the remainder of this chapter I discuss the features of the ten plaque types in greater detail and present their geographic distribution. In Chapter 5 I discuss their spatial distribution in greater depth as part of my analysis of their possible readings. All percentages were calculated using only the typed plaques (Types I–X) in ESPRIT and do not include the unknowns.

Type I: Classic The Classic plaques are bipartite in compositional structure and thus have clearly defined top and base design fields (Figure 2.18a–f). Approximately 70 percent of all the plaques are Classic. They are by far the most common and most extensively distributed type (Figure 2.19), found in a 40,000 sq km area: from the Lisbon region in the west, to the Algarve in the south, to Cáceres in Spain in the east, and to Castelo Branco in Portugal in the north. Like the plaques as a whole, they are most heavily concentrated in Évora. Most Classic plaques are trapezoidal in form (419/603), although they can be rectangular (135/603) or, more rarely, composite (3/603). Nearly all the Classic plaques are found with one perforation (455/603); less commonly they are found with two perforations (54/603) or with no perforations (43/603). The vast majority of the Classic plaques are only engraved on one side (591/603), although some Classic plaques have a draft or sketch on the obverse side, as noted above. A range of design motifs can be found on the top field of the Classic plaques (Figure 2.20a–g). Straps are the most common motif (82 percent). These can be horizontal, running from the edge of the plaque to the triangular unengraved field (62 percent; Figure 2.20a) or, less often, vertical, from the top edge of the plaque

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f ig u r e 2 . 1 8. Classic plaques. a, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). b, Santiago Maior (Évora, Portugal). c, Brissos 6 (Évora, Portugal). d, Cebolinho 1 (Évora, Portugal). e, Aljezur (Faro, Portugal). f, Comenda 2 (Évora, Portugal).

toward the band (38 percent; Figure 2.20b). Straps are generally found as the only motif, although approximately a fifth (22 percent) of plaques with straps have a collar (Figure 2.20c). The other top motifs that are sometimes found on Classic plaques, alone or in combination, are fishnets (6 percent; Figure 2.20d), inverted Vs (4 percent; Figure 2.20e), rays (3 percent; Figure 2.20f), and triangles (3 percent; Figure 2.20g). When analyzing the distribution of top motifs by region, Évora again dominates, with the largest number of different design motifs present on the top field of the Classic plaques. The rays are the only motif more commonly found outside Évora, being most abundant in plaques from Lisbon and Faro.

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f ig u r e 2 . 19. Distribution of Classic plaques. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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f ig u r e 2 .2 0. Variability in top design motifs. a, Cabeço da Arruda (Lisbon, Portugal). b, Carvão (Évora, Portugal). c, Escoural (Évora, Portugal). d, El Pozuelo 6 (Huelva, Spain). e, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal). f, Brissos 6 (Évora, Portugal). g, Aljezur (Faro, Portugal).

f ig u r e 2 .2 1 . Variability in bands. a, Cabeço (Portalegre, Portugal). b, Sobreira (Portalegre, Portugal). c, Passo 1 (Évora, Portugal). d, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal).

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f ig u r e 2 .2 2 . Variability in number of registers. a, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). b, Folha da Amendoeira (Beja, Portugal). c, Cebolinho 1 (Évora, Portugal). d, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal).

Separating the top and base fields of Classic plaques is either a horizontal line or a series of filled or unfilled bands (Figure 2.21a–d). Approximately half (54 percent) of the Classic plaques have only a horizontal line (that is, no bands) (Figure 2.21a). The other half have anywhere from one to ten filled and/or unfilled bands (Figure 2.21b–d). The fill can be in the form of simple cross-hatching or (more rarely) miniature triangles or chevrons. The base field of the Classic plaques displays an enormous range in the orientation (vertical vs. horizontal) and iteration of the design motifs. Indeed, nearly all the basic design elements found on the Iberian plaques can be found on the base of the Classic plaques; and one of these motifs—the checkerboard—is only found on Classic plaques. The only motif not found on any Classic plaque is the radiating chevron (only found on Unipartite plaques). Most Classic plaques (81 percent) are simple in their design structure, with only one design element. As discussed above, however, some Classic plaques (19 percent) are hybrids, which combine different design elements (Figure 2.9a–d). The most common motif on the base of Classic plaques—found either singly or in combination with other motifs—is the triangle (380/603). The other common motifs (in decreasing order of abundance) are the chevron (95), zigzag (64), and checkerboard (40). For the vast majority of the plaques, these design elements are organized in horizontal registers. The number of registers found in Classic plaques ranges from one to fourteen (Figure 2.22a–d). Occasionally the elements are oriented vertically (i.e., lying down or rotated 90 degrees). Seventeen Classic plaques have lying chevron motifs, and four have lying zigzags. As a group, the Classic plaques average 15.91 cm in height and 263.18 g in weight.

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f ig u r e 2 .2 3 . Transitional plaques. a, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). b, Dolmen das Conchadas (Lisbon, Portugal). c, Granja de Céspedes (Badajoz, Spain). d, Passo 1 (Évora, Portugal). e, Aljezur (Faro, Portugal).

Type II: Transitional Approximately 12 percent of the plaques are Transitional in structure. The empty triangular field of the Classic plaques has been preserved; yet there is no attempt to separate a top and base field through the use of a horizontal line or band(s) or there is some separation, but the base designs are “squeezed” very close to the top of the plaque (Figure 2.23a–e). When there is some separation, creating a quasi-top field, a collar is the most common top design element (18/105). The geographic distribution of Transitional plaques is the same as that of Classic plaques (Figure 2.24).

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f ig u r e 2 .2 4 . Distribution of Transitional plaques. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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Although most Transitional plaques are trapezoidal in form (52/105), they are also frequently rectangular (44/105). Most Transitional plaques have only one perforation (68/105), though sometimes they have two perforations (31/105). Only one Transitional plaque was found with no perforations. Like the Classic plaques, most Transitional plaques were only engraved on one side (102/105). In marked contrast to the Classic plaques, the Transitional plaques are quite limited in their design elements. Triangles (47/105) and chevrons (42/105) are the principal design elements used. Checkerboards are never found in Transitional plaques. It may be of some significance that the number of registers found on Transitional plaques is generally higher than the number found on Classic plaques. Indeed, the plaque with the highest number of registers of all the plaques in ESPRIT is a Transitional plaque from Aljezur with seventeen or eighteen registers (the top of the plaque is not symmetrical) (Figure 2.23e). It seems plausible that the top field got “squeezed” out or disappeared altogether, as the engraver needed to make a higher number of registers. Such evidence may be useful in seriating the plaques, which could prove to be a fruitful avenue for future research. Transitional plaques average 15.58 cm in height and 292.2 g in weight. They are basically the same size as Classic plaques, yet they weigh, on average, somewhat more.

Type III: Hoe The Hoe plaques are transitional in structure but are sufficiently different in form and in the use of design elements to constitute a type of their own. Hoe plaques are always composite in form and decorated with triangles (Figure 2.25a–e). They are rare; only 1 percent of the engraved plaques in ESPRIT are Hoe plaques. They can have one (6/13) or two (5/13) perforations; only one Hoe plaque has no perforations. Most of the Hoe plaques (12/13) are only engraved on one side; one plaque has an unfinished sketch on the reverse showing the same design, which is found completed on the obverse. In addition to being rare, Hoe plaques are found in a fairly restricted region in the northeastern zone of plaque distribution in Évora, Portalegre, and Cáceres (Figure 2.26). Hoe plaques average 17.72 cm in height and 324.3 g in weight. They are generally large and heavier than Classic and Transitional plaques.

Type IV: Unipartite Approximately 4 percent of the plaques in ESPRIT are Unipartite. These plaques are decorated continuously from the top to bottom, without any horizontal bands distinguishing between the top and base or any unengraved triangular field

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f ig u r e 2 .25. Hoe plaques. a, Torre de Curvo 1 (Portalegre, Portugal). b, Sobreira (Portalegre, Portugal). c, Vega del Peso (Badajoz, Spain). d, Crato (Portalegre, Portugal). e, Crato (Portalegre, Portugal).

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f ig u r e 2 .2 6. Distribution of Hoe plaques. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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f ig u r e 2 .27. Unipartite plaques. a, Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon, Portugal). b, Rocio de Montinho (Évora, Portugal). c, Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon, Portugal).

(Figure 2.27a–c). They are most commonly rectangular (19/37), although they are also often trapezoidal (14/37). They can have either one (18/37) or two (14/37) perforations; more rarely they are found without any perforations (3/37). One unique example had four perforations. Most often (32/37) only one side was engraved. As with the Transitional plaques, a limited set of design motifs is found on the Unipartite plaques. Most have triangles (20/37) or chevrons (16/37). The radiating chevron motif is found only on the Unipartite plaques (5/37) (Figure 2.6d and Plate 1). The distribution of Unipartite plaques is extensive, although (being rare) they are not common in any region (Figure 2.28). Unipartite plaques average 16.08 cm in height and 246.71 g in weight. They are comparable to the Classics and Transitional in size, although they weigh, on average, the least of all the plaques.

Type V: Rug Rug plaques are primarily rectangular in form and unipartite in structure (typically with a rectangular unengraved field in the center), have one or two perforations, and are engraved on one or both sides (Figure 2.29a–c). Triangles are the most common motif on these plaques, although zigzags and herringbones can be found. While most of these plaques are made on slate, it is not uncommon for them to be made on schist or pink/orange sandstone.

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f ig u r e 2 .2 8. Distribution of Unipartite plaques. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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f ig u r e 2 .2 9. Rug plaques. a, São Bartolomé de la Torre (Huelva, Spain). b, Velada (Évora, Portugal). c, Torre das Arcas 5 (Portalegre, Portugal).

Only about 4 percent of the plaques are Rug plaques, and they are known only from a few dispersed sites located at the outermost range of the plaques’ distribution (Figure 2.30). Rug plaques average 16.81 cm in height and 299.3 g in weight. They represent some of the largest and heaviest plaques.

Type VI: Strappy The Strappy plaques are another distinctive group of unipartite plaques (Figure 2.31a–e). They are rare (constituting only 2 percent of the total) and are the most uniform and least variable in form and style of all the plaque types. Strappy plaques are always composite in form, engraved on only one side, perforated with two holes, and nearly always decorated with horizontal registers (one to three) of triangles that seem to be “suspended” by “straps.” One plaque has only the straps suspending horizontal bands (Figure 2.31d). Strappy plaques are found in a restricted range, principally at a few sites in Portalegre and Cáceres (Figure 2.32). The Strappy plaques are the largest plaques, with an average height of 18.93 cm, and the highest average weight, at 367 g.

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f ig u r e 2 .3 0. Distribution of Rug plaques. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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f ig u r e 2 .3 1 . Strappy plaques: a, Acenha de la Borrega (Cáceres, Spain). b, Marquesa (Portalegre, Portugal). c, Spain (provenance unknown). d, Marquesa (Portalegre, Portugal). e, Cebolinho 1 (Évora, Portugal).

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f ig u r e 2 .3 2 . Distribution of Strappy plaques. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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f ig u r e 2 .33 . Biomorph Simple plaques. a, Idanha-a-Nova (Castelo Branco, Portugal) (obverse). b, Idanha-a-Nova (Castelo Branco, Portugal) (reverse). c, Barbacena (Portalegre, Portugal). d, Vega del Guadancil (Cáceres, Spain). e, Crato (Portalegre, Portugal). f, Trincones 1 (Cáceres, Spain) (obverse). g, Trincones 1 (Cáceres, Spain) (reverse).

The Biomorphs We now turn to the most controversial group of all the Iberian engraved plaques— the Biomorphs. While the Biomorphs constitute a minority of the plaques known (about 6 percent), they have attracted the most attention, as discussed in Chapter 1. The Biomorphs are perhaps the most difficult group to classify and the most

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f ig u r e 2 .3 4 . Distribution of Biomorph Simple plaques. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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f ig u r e 2 .35. Biomorph Whiskered plaques. a, Cueva de la Mora (Huelva, Spain). b, Mértola (Beja, Portugal). c, Huelva (Huelva, Spain). d, Jazigo de Alcarapinha (Portalegre, Portugal).

variable in form and style. But two groups can be distinguished, based on their form and design elements: the Biomorph Simple and the Biomorph Whiskered plaques.

t y pe v i i : biomor p h s i m pl e The Biomorph Simple plaques are a varied group that suggest a being of some sort through the presence of “appendages” that reach to the bottom of the plaques, three to five “feet/fingers/toes,” a “nose,” and subocular lines (Figure 2.33a–g). Approximately 4 percent of the plaques are of this type. They are most often composite in form (16/36) but can also be trapezoidal (8/36) and rectangular (7/36). Most commonly they have two perforations (20/36), although they can also have none (2/36), one (4/36), or even four (1/36). In addition to their “ocular” motif, they are most often associated with the zigzag motif (16/36) and less often with triangles (8/36). The distribution of the Biomorph Simple plaques is quite similar to that of the Strappy plaques. They are found primarily in sites in the northeast corner of the plaque range, though a few are known from Évora (Figure 2.34). The Biomorph Simple plaques are the second largest plaques, averaging 16.95 cm in height, and the second heaviest of the plaques, averaging 355.4 g.

t y pe v i i i: biomor ph w h i s k e r e d The Biomorph Whiskered plaques (Figure 2.35a–d) are more coherent as a group than the Biomorph Simple plaques. They differ from the Biomorph Simple plaques in their use of design elements and in the regularity of facial details. In general the

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f ig u r e 2 .36. Distribution of Biomorph Whiskered plaques. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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f ig u r e 2 .3 7. Style Variant plaques. a, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal). b, Herdade da Ordem 1 (Portalegre, Portugal). c, Candeeira (Évora, Portugal).

Biomorph Whiskered plaques have a more geometric quality than the Biomorph Simple plaques. These plaques generally have two “eyes,” a vertical “nose,” and two sets of two, three, or four horizontal subocular bands or “whiskers” (some scholars have called these tattoos: Déchelette 1907) emanating from the lower part of the “nose” to the edge of the plaque. These plaques also generally have two perforations and are decorated primarily with horizontal bands of inverted triangles, though the triangles are sometimes combined with lying chevrons and regular (upwardpointing) triangles. These plaques are not only rare but are found in disparate locations in the outermost extent of the plaque range (Figure 2.36). The Biomorph Whiskered plaques are the smallest plaques, on average. Their average height is 13.82 cm. I was unable to weigh any of these plaques.

Type IX: Style Variants Among the Style Variant plaques, the engraving style is very sketchy and does not appear to be aimed at producing any one of the recognizable types (Figure 2.37a–c). This type may represent practice plaques for apprentices, a child’s attempt at making a plaque, a chronologically later evocation of the more standard plaques, or some other phenomenon. Thirty-three plaques (4 percent) are Style Variants. These plaques are extensively found, though most often in the Évora and Portalegre areas (Figure 2.38).

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f ig u r e 2 .3 8. Distribution of Style Variant plaques. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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f ig u r e 2 .39. Recycled plaques. a, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal) (obverse). b, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal) (reverse). c, Carvão (Évora, Portugal). d, Ribeira de Odivelas (Beja, Portugal).

Type X: Recycled These plaques represent a reuse of another plaque (Figure 2.39a–d). Often these are fragments of plaques that were repolished, reengraved, and/or reperforated (see Chapter 3). Twenty-nine plaques (3.6 percent) are Recycled plaques. Like the Style Variants, they are most often found in Évora and Portalegre (Figure 2.40).

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f ig u r e 2 . 4 0. Distribution of Recycled plaques. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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three

bio gr a ph i e s with Alexander P. Woods

D

espite the brilliant creativity they often display, the engraved plaques of Iberia have traditionally been viewed as static entities. Prehistorians have rarely considered the technical skills, cognitive decisions, social relationships, and embodied knowledge that were activated to produce them and that generated their distribution throughout southwestern Iberia. Their biographies—their raw material acquisition, manufacture, distribution, and consumption by skilled and social actors in a dynamic historical and sociopolitical landscape—have generally been ignored. As with the life histories of people, the life histories of objects are the outcome of social structuring forces as well as the properties inherent in their materiality (Dietler and Herbich 1998). Thus the plaques were objects acted upon by knowledgeable cultural beings as well as agents that stimulated and provoked social actions, memories, and kinesthetic behaviors. Throughout the plaques’ transformation from a body of raw material into a finished object of visual culture, their makers deployed knowledge, bodily gestures, and technical skills. Different responses—both mental and physical—and varying degrees of sociality and performativity (Carter 2004) were provoked in the creation of the plaques, engaging the producers and those observing them. This theme of the dualism of material culture is developed throughout this book. In this chapter I explore the life histories of the plaques. To animate their biography, I draw from a range of methodologies and analytical tools, including experimental replication, use-wear studies, and stylistic analyses of the artifacts. I articulate the chaîne opératoire approach of André Leroi-Gourhan (1993), with a concern for the formation processes of Michael Schiffer (1987), and a biographical methodology espoused by Arjun Appadurai (1986) and Igor Kopytoff (1986), addressing the economic, social, technical, and ritual pathways of the plaques. Certainly the biographies of artifacts extend into the present with their representation through excavation, study, illustration, publication, and display (Holtorf 1998, 2005), as summarized in Chapter 1. As with all life histories, there are and will always be many missing pieces. In initiating this inquiry into the plaques’ material and social lives, however, questions and insights will be generated that scholars in the future may be able to pursue.

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or igi ns The vast majority of the Iberian engraved plaques were made from slate. Only 5 percent of the plaques in ESPRIT were made from other materials, such as sandstone and schist. All these raw materials are found in the undulating plains of western Iberia (Figure 3.1). There is not, however, a 1:1 correlation between a plaque find spot and a local outcrop of its raw material. In other words, not all engraved plaques are found near slate, schist, or sandstone; nor are all regions of west Iberia with slate, schist, or sandstone outcrops associated with engraved plaques. This indicates that the engraved plaque phenomenon cannot simply be explained in terms of raw material availability. The mere existence of a slate outcrop did not stimulate the local production of engraved plaques. Rather, a specific combination of factors and needs—whether they were demographic, economic, political, or ideological—came together to cause certain groups to engage in the extraction, manufacture, and/or acquisition of engraved plaques. Because groups probably had different methods by which to access the raw materials and their finished products, the social and symbolic meaning of the plaques likely varied over space. For the purposes of this discussion, I focus on the processing of slate, because it was the predominant raw material used to make the plaques. Geologically, slate is defined as a “compact, fine-grained metamorphic rock,” which has a “slaty cleavage and thus can be split into slabs and thin plates” (Bates and Jackson 1984:471). Slates are formed by the low-grade metamorphism of shales, mudstones, and finegrained tuffs and can occur in association with other metamorphic rocks. Slate is abundantly found throughout Portugal and western Spain. In fact the buildings of many villages in Portugal and Spain that are popular tourist destinations, such as Monsaraz (Évora) and Piodão (Coimbra), are largely made of slate (Figure 3.2). Today the slate industry is a significant component of the economy of both countries (Instituto Tecnológico GeoMinero de España 1994). In 1997 Spain was the largest producer of roofing slates in the world (García-Guinea et al. 1997), with major quarries in Badajoz (Pizarras Vilar del Rey) and Orense. Because slate is such an important commodity in the Portuguese and Spanish economies, slate outcrops throughout the peninsula have been mapped and their physical and chemical properties analyzed. Any slate outcrop large enough for modern-day quarrying, however, probably will not preserve evidence of ancient quarrying. Indeed our best chance in finding ancient quarries is likely to be in small outcrops that are not economically viable in today’s slate market. The slates used to make the Iberian plaques range in color from a light grayishblue to black. Their color variation reflects differences in the amount of hydrous phyllosilicate minerals in the rock, which tend to be light-colored and which produce the typical cleavage of slate. The phyllosilicates include muscovite, chlorite, and other minerals that form solid solutions within this range of compositions at different temperatures. The amount of phyllosilicates is due to both the amount of time they were heated and under pressure and their initial composition, including 77

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f ig u r e 3 . 1 . Distribution of amphibolite and slate outcrops in the western Iberian Peninsula. Map produced by Angela Collins and adapted from Lillios 1997: Fig. 1.

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f ig u r e 3 .2 . Mill made of slate in Vale de Moinhos (Guarda, Portugal). Photograph courtesy of Lara Bacelar Alves.

their water content. Lighter-colored slates tend to be more phyllosilicate-rich and therefore are softer and cleave more readily. One site that contained a large number of these lighter slates is Caeira 7; most of its plaques were, not surprisingly, found as fragments (Figure 3.3a). The darker slates have less chlorite and/or muscovite and cleave with more difficulty, though as finished pieces they tend to be more durable. It appears that most plaque types were made with these darker slates. The very dark/black slates, however, tend to be associated with the Strappy plaques (Figure 3.3b). The Strappy plaques tend to be found only in the core area of the plaques’ distribution (Évora, Portalegre, Cáceres), so perhaps this is a function of raw material availability. But it is also possible that the function of the Strappy plaques may explain the use of these very dark slates. For example, engraving is more easily visible on a dark background, so perhaps these plaques were viewed from a greater distance than other types of plaques. Or perhaps they needed to be more durable for the specific uses to which they were subjected. Although not all slate plaques are found near local slate outcrops, the vast majority of the engraved slate plaques are, in fact, found in the slate-rich region of southern Portugal and Spain, known by geologists as the Ossa-Morena Zone (OMZ) of the Southwest Iberian Massif. The OMZ was formed 390–310 million years ago during the Variscan Orogeny, during which it was an active continental 79

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f ig u r e 3 .3 . a, Top fragment of Classic plaque from Caeira 7 (Évora, Portugal). Photograph by author, courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia. b, Strappy plaque from Marquesa (Portalegre, Portugal). Photograph by author, courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia.

margin and magmatic arc. As a result of this dynamic geology, this region displays a particularly rich variety of metamorphic rocks, ores, and minerals (Tornos et al. 2004). The OMZ is significant to archaeologists, because it was not only a source of slate but also a source of amphibolite and granite. Amphibolite is a dark-green or dark-gray metamorphic rock and was the primary raw material used to make polished stone tools during the Late Neolithic of western Iberia (Lillios 1997). Granite was commonly used in the manufacture of grinding stones in Iberian prehistory. Thus the OMZ landscape was critical for Neolithic peoples of southwestern Iberia as a source for the raw materials used to make tools necessary for the extraction and processing of food and other natural resources. A biographical approach to material culture implies that we must consider not only the geographical sources of raw materials but also the social and symbolic landscapes from which they derive (Bradley and Edmonds 1993; Edmonds 1999;

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Boivin and Owoc 2004). We must be attentive to the associations involved with stone, its source, and the process of extracting it from the earth. What did it mean for ancient Neolithic peoples to visit the Alentejo and Extremadura to quarry amphibolite, granite, or slate? What histories and memories were evoked by this landscape? We will never know exactly what these Neolithic peoples thought, of course, but they must have realized they were not the first to travel through this landscape. By the time slate was used to make plaques, dozens of megalithic tombs, covered in mounds of stone and earth and housing the remains of earlier peoples, dotted this countryside. Large standing stones or menhirs and stone circles or cromlechs also populated the landscape (Figure 3.4). The use of this landscape continued and indeed intensified through the period of the plaques’ use. The actual quarrying of slate in the amounts that were necessary during the Neolithic must have been fairly small-scale and would have required only a stone axe to break a working size block of slate. An individual or a small group of people could have extracted and transported the amount necessary to produce a dozen or so plaques. Possible ethnographic analogies to the scale of quarrying in Neolithic Iberia may be found in the work of O. W. Hampton (1999) on the Dani of Irian Jaya. Richly textured accounts of slate quarrying exist for European contexts, although the operations described tend to be industrial in scale. Thus, as entertaining as it is to read nineteenth-century Welsh quarryman Morgan Richards’ account of the slate quarrying projects in North Wales, his concerns with waste, accidents, productivity, unions, and drunken quarrymen are probably not germane to understanding the scale and nature of slate-mining in ancient Iberia (Richards 1876).

f ig u r e 3 . 4 . Monte dos Almendres (Évora, Portugal). Photograph by Morten Schlütter.

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Furthermore, the deeply ingrained knowledge that Richards cites as a result of such intensive experience in working slate, in which “the art of rising, splitting, and dressing slates has become to him a sort of a second nature, and the difficult work is done, as it were, without effort or trying” (ibid.:2), may also not be entirely applicable to the small-scale, irregular production of slate plaques in the Neolithic. The high degree of stylistic variation, with many plaques displaying production errors and irregularities (as noted in the previous chapter and discussed further below), gives the impression that plaques were produced infrequently by numerous individuals and in relatively small amounts at a time. We should bear in mind, however, that quarrying, shaping, and engraving were distinct processes which could have taken place at different periods, in different locations, by different people, and under different modes of production.

c r e at ion Although archaeologists have yet to discover prehistoric slate quarries in western Iberia, some clues suggest the steps by which the plaques were manufactured. At some rare sites that may have been workshops unfinished plaques have been found. Gonçalves (1983–1984) noted that at Cabeço do Pé da Erra (Santarém) evidence was found for plaque manufacture in a cut yet unengraved piece of slate, which is not found locally. Full publication of this site is in progress (Gonçalves n.d.a). In the spring of 2004, at the newly discovered settlement site of Aguas Frias (Évora), numerous plaque roughouts made of slate were found. Some of these roughouts were sketchily engraved, though none were perforated. Study and publication of these plaques are also in progress (Gonçalves n.d.b). Within the burial sites themselves and in association with other complete plaques are sometimes found plaques that seem to be unfinished, without any engraving or with incomplete engraving or hatching (Figure 3.5). These unfinished plaques illustrate the role of flaking the stone prior to polishing and engraving. They also make clear that the skills required to create an engraved plaque were closely related to those used in the manufacture of flaked and polished stone tools—technologies which long preceded the production of engraved plaques. Thus the plaques do not represent the development of dramatically new technical knowledge or skills. Because of the scarce evidence for plaque manufacture, we must largely base our understanding of the process on the clues provided by the finished plaques themselves. Studying those plaques housed in Portuguese and Spanish museums and examining photographs and illustrations, particularly those published by Gonçalves (2003b), may provide some indication of the chaîne opératoire. In addition, I have relied on a series of replication experiments directed by University of Iowa graduate student Alexander D. Woods (Woods and Lillios 2006). Except for Castro’s reference to his experiments (Castro 1964), the replications that we con-

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f ig u r e 3 .5. Unfinished plaque from Caeira 7 (Évora, Portugal). Photograph by author, courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia.

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ducted were the first to have been systematically carried out and described in terms of their methodology. Archaeological experiments are best viewed as heuristic exercises, so we will not necessarily learn with certainty the exact way that plaques were made or how long it took to engrave a plaque. As with all replication experiments, the problem of equifinality—the potential for more than one action producing the same result or end—is significant. But in re-creating ancient technologies we can begin to grasp the kinds of technical problems that had to be solved. How do you break up slate so that it is roughly the size of a plaque? What kinds of stones work best to polish the sides and edges of a plaque? How should a slab of slate be held in order to polish the stone instead of the tips of your fingers? What kind or size of engraving tool will make it possible to produce regular, clear, and enduring incisions on slate? How easy is it to fi x mistakes, such as incisions that slip out of control? How do you make a perforation? In carrying out these replication experiments, we also develop a more informed understanding of the technical features of an artifact. Thus we hoped to gain a better understanding of the origins of the scratches, abrasions, and fractures that we often find associated with the plaques. For our experiment, we used broken fragments from a discarded slate chalkboard that I salvaged in the spring of 2002 from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, at the University of California, Los Angeles (where I had spent my sabbatical year). Even the act of breaking up this rather large (1.5 m by 2 m) mass of slate proved to be a learning exercise for me. I did not have access to a saw to break up the blackboard in an efficient and orderly way, so I relied on a hammer. After some attempts to be systematic by hammering out the slate along a line and snapping the stone (which only worked about 25 percent of the time), I found that the best way to break up pieces was to hammer away, more or less randomly, for a couple of hours. This method, while inelegant, messy, wasteful, noisy, and painful, did the job and was rather cathartic. The color (and hence the mineral composition) and cleavage of the slate from this blackboard were comparable to those of the slates used for the majority of the plaques. Thus we considered it an appropriate medium on which to conduct the experiments. Woods subsequently carried out additional attempts at plaque replication using different dark slates, and his experiences with these slates confirmed that most behaved in much the same manner as those described in this experiment. It is relevant to mention here that Woods had significant experience in replicating and using ancient technologies, including flint-knapping and, to a lesser degree, producing polished stone tools. I had some experience in flaking flint, primarily in giving demonstrations to students in my anthropology classes. Thus, like the ancient producers of these plaques, we began with some previous knowledge and experience in ancient technologies. Our production of the replicated slate plaques involved four major steps: shaping, grinding, engraving, and perforation. A step-by-step discussion of the process we employed follows.

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f ig u r e 3 .6. Creating a roughout. a, Alexander Woods preparing a roughout by fl aking. b, A slate roughout.

Shaping The archaeological record has not left us many clues for carrying out this initial process of shaping and the subsequent grinding. The working of stone is, as always, a reductive process. The expected residue from shaping and grinding slate (flakes, grit, and dust) would be relatively ephemeral, given the scale of production of the Neolithic. Thus the methods we employed had to be based on our knowledge of ancient lithic technologies and on informed guesses. Our first step involved selecting a piece of slate slightly larger than the desired finished product. For a finished plaque 15 cm by 10 cm (the average size of an archaeological plaque) we selected a piece of slate that was approximately 30 cm by 15 cm (400–1000 g). Initially we shaped the slate by percussion. We used a small chert pebble as a hammerstone, taking small “bites” out of the edge of the piece until the desired vertical and horizontal dimensions were achieved (Figure 3.6a). When shaping a plaque by percussion, spalling inevitably occurred across the opposing face. This spalling resulted from the force of the blow radiating out, like

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ripples on a pond, in much the same way as when flint is flaked. Unlike flint, however, slate tends to break into plates along cleavage planes. These spalls are not terribly harmful when making a plaque as long as they do not run too deep. When a plaque spalls off both faces, however, the resulting edge is too thin, and the shape of the plaque must be altered. In order to prevent that type of spalling from occurring, plaques were worked almost exclusively in one direction. This often resulted in an unground blank with one relatively flat side and one side with a series of spalls around the edges and a large pedestal of material in the center (Figure 3.6b). When the plaque was ground, this artifact from flaking resulted in a plaque with one flat face (which usually became the reverse surface) and one convex or rounded face. It took at most forty-five minutes to create a roughout by flaking and could take as little as ten minutes.

Grinding This step could be divided into a grinding process and a polishing process, although the difference between these two processes is only a matter of scale. As a result, and for the sake of simplicity, all abrasive surface treatments are considered here under the heading of grinding. Three different grinding surfaces were used to grind the slate plaques: sidewalk cement, tabular sandstone from Arizona, and tanned buffalo hide. The sidewalk, we felt, would work as a viable proxy for a rough but level stone surface that might be found on a large granite boulder (which are often found near the slate outcrops). Sandstone polishers were used during the Neolithic of Iberia, and a tanned hide would certainly have been available. Additionally, a few plaques were burnished with a polished chert river pebble following the use of the sandstone. The typical plaque was ground as follows: once shaped by percussion, a rough blank went through a coarse grinding process on the concrete sidewalk outside our department building, MacBride Hall (Figure 3.7a). Blanks were ground in a circular or figure-eight motion until all spalled sections were removed and a uniform surface was achieved. As mentioned earlier, this tended to result in one flat surface and one convex surface, as most of the spalling was confined to the edges of the blank on a single side. In working the surface in such a manner, the plaque was held at a very low angle relative to the grinding surface, which frequently led to a noticeable sharpening of the plaque edges. Sharp edges were fragile and encouraged surface spalling, especially while the plaque was being ground against a coarse surface like the sidewalk. To minimize this risk, we periodically dulled the plaque edges and avoided major edge work except during the very beginning of the coarse grinding process, when the edges were initially straightened following the percussion stage. Overall, the coarse grinding was the most time-consuming component of the plaque production process (Figure 3.7b). We spent about an hour to an hour and a half grinding each plaque on the sidewalk, depending on the depth and frequency of surface spalling occurrences during the percussion stage. Of course, the side86

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f ig u r e 3 .7. Grinding. a, Alexander Woods grinding a plaque on the cement sidewalk. b, A plaque after rough grinding.

walk would not have been available to the prehistoric plaque producer, and thus a longer period of initial grinding was likely needed. Grit, gravel, and other appropriately coarse abrasive substances would have been more than adequate, however, and it would be safe to say that this process should not have taken longer than an afternoon even when using the poorest of abrasives. Once an even and unpitted surface was achieved, the plaques were ground on a block of sandstone. This stage helped to eliminate or reduce the deep scratches left in the surface of a blank after the rough grinding process. Additionally, the smoother sandstone was less likely to initiate spalls on the edges of the blank and was used to finish the sides and corners of each piece. Occasionally a polished chert pebble was used as a burnisher to remove the finer scratches left by the sandstone. As a final step, the plaques were rubbed against a buffalo-hide flint-knapping pad. Woods had used the pad for about a year, and it included a fair quantity of flint dust and residue.

Engraving In preparing a plaque for engraving, the typical engraver exercised a high degree of planning and fine-motor control. Despite the knowledge and manual control required in this stage of production, however, our replication experiments suggest that the actual engraving of a plaque was a relatively brief phase in its life history. Given the availability and wide use of flint in the Neolithic of Iberia, as well as the rarer use of copper, our engraving was performed with a variety of expedient chert implements and in two instances with the end of a twisted piece of copper wire (Figure 3.8a, b). In general the edge of a broken chert river pebble was found to be the most effective engraving tool. Tools with carefully manicured edges, such as blades, tended to be too sharp and produced very fine lines that were difficult to see. This is a significant finding; I had considered the blades regularly found in 87

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f ig u r e 3 .8. Engraving. a, Alexander Woods engraving a Classic plaque. b, Tools used to engrave a plaque.

association with the plaques in burials as possible objects used to make the plaques. This does not appear to have been the case, however. The slate worked in this experiment could be engraved with just about anything harder than a fingernail, including another piece of slate; exceedingly sharp tools proved unnecessary. Any hard pointed object was effective. The steps followed in our replication experiments were suggested by the archaeological objects themselves, by their engraving microstratigraphy, and by studies carried out by Gonçalves (2003b). In general the first lines typically created (and those that are often the most deeply incised) were the horizontal registers. Following this, the design elements were outlined; and, finally, these elements were filled by hatching, most often in the form of perpendicular lines produced by shallow incisions. In total, the engraving of the plaques’ design took only about twenty minutes, although more complex designs that required some planning or involved large numbers of registers might have taken a bit longer. Some plaques with sketches and corrections suggest the level of planning and what was prioritized in creating an engraved plaque (see Chapter 2). These are rather crucial observations. I wish to examine these plaques in greater detail and to discuss others that provide insights into the engraving chaîne opératoire. To review: in the four plaques illustrated in Figure 2.4a–h, the obverse and reverse designs appear to be the same or closely related, suggesting that some care was taken to get the spacing and, in particular, the number of registers correct. In most of these cases, the finished side appears to be of reasonably high quality and made by a sure hand. Perhaps the engraver was showing an apprentice how to plan out a plaque, and then the engraver proceeded to carry out the work. Other plaques indicate that the registers were the most significant features (or at least the most difficult to get right). For example, some plaques have registers that appear to have been added at a later date. One such plaque was found at the site of Passo 1 (Évora, Portugal) (Figure 3.9). This is a unipartite plaque, composite in form, with two perforations. It was engraved with twelve registers of chevrons. But the eighth register appears to have been added after the others were done. It 88

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f ig u r e 3 .9. Passo 1 (Évora, Portugal). a, Obverse. b, Reverse.

f ig u r e 3 . 10. a, Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon, Portugal). b, Granja de Céspedes (Badajoz, Spain). c, Passo 1 (Évora, Portugal).

seems to have been squeezed in between the seventh and ninth registers and was hatched in single lines, rather than double-hatched like the other chevrons. Was this for aesthetic reasons? Did the artist feel that there was too much empty space between the seventh and ninth register? This really does not appear to have been the case, because the spaces without that register appear perfectly consistent with the others. Was the creation of this additional register part of the engraving phase that occurred with the engraving of the obverse, in a completely different motif?

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f ig u r e 3 . 1 1 . Monte Canelas (Faro, Portugal).

On this reverse we have an unusual design field, with a rectangular section left unengraved, surrounded by herringbone patterns. Indeed, on numerous plaques a register—specifically the bottom one—appears squeezed in, as though the engraver miscalculated the amount of room left to create a register (Figure 3.10a–c). Another mysterious addition was made to a plaque from Monte Canelas

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f ig u r e 3 . 1 2 . Vale de Rodrigo 1 (Évora, Portugal). a, Obverse. b, Reverse.

(Figure 3.11). This is a Classic plaque, in which only part of a chevron was added between the fourth and fifth complete register. A few plaques seem to have the registers from the front continued onto the reverse. One of these plaques was found at Vale de Rodrigo (Figure 3.12a, b). Its obverse is that of a Classic plaque except for a filled triangle space in a space usually left unfilled, creating an unusual appearance. On its otherwise blank reverse side was a single register of triangles. The style of these triangles appears somewhat different from that of the obverse; they are generally broader at their bases than the triangles on the obverse. Perhaps this side was not engraved at the same time or by the same person who engraved the obverse. Another curious plaque was found at Praia de S. Torpes (Setúbal) (Figure 3.13). It is a Classic plaque, with four registers of triangles. But the fourth register of triangles is in the same register as the horizontal band, a common design element on

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f ig u r e 3 . 13 . Praia de S. Torpes (Setúbal, Portugal).

the plaques. Careful examination of the microstratigraphy of the incisions suggests that the register of triangles postdates the horizontal line. In other words, for some reason someone thought it important to create an additional register of triangles or perhaps to fi x an error previously made. Finally, another set of plaques supports the idea that the number of registers was prioritized by engravers and that drawing the correct number of these sometimes

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f ig u r e 3 . 1 4 . a, Herdade da Ordem 1 (Portalegre, Portugal). b, Lapeira I (Évora, Portugal). c, Viana do Alentejo (Évora, Portugal). d, Herdade da Ordem 1 (Portalegre, Portugal). e, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). f, Passo 1 (Évora, Portugal). g, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal).

overrode visual regularity or aesthetics. In these plaques there appears to be plenty of room to create an additional register, but this was not done. Either a space was left or a register with very tall design elements was drawn in (Figure 3.14a–g). These odd register spacings made me question whether a statistically significant correlation existed between the size (height) of a plaque and the number of its registers. If there was a correlation between its size and its registers, one could argue that the registers were simply drawn to fill in the available space. If not, then we might suppose the registers drawn were independent of the size. My observations (as described above) made me inclined to believe that a plaque’s size and registers would be independent and not correlate. An initial test of this (using just the plaques in the Leisner publications) indicated no correlation (Lillios 2003). When I later carried out this same analysis using a larger dataset, however, a fairly strong correlation was found between the size and the number of registers. This was surprising—and confusing, especially given the qualitative evidence I was observing. This result could mean one of two things. Either the engravers chose (or had the ability to choose or fashion) a plaque based on the number of registers it was going to have or they filled

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f ig u r e 3 . 15. a, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal). b, Caeira 7 (Évora, Portugal).

in the space based on the size of the raw material. Perhaps in some regions, closer to the raw materials, engravers had more opportunities to select raw materials to fit their desired end, whereas in more distant zones they had less control over the size of the raw material. Further studies of this, using spatial information, would certainly be an important direction for future research. In addition to register numbers, the Neolithic plaque artisans also seemed at times concerned with creating design elements with regularized patterns of alternating dark and light fields. The plaques that appeared to pose the most challenges in this regard were the Classic checkerboard plaques. Woods also noted this in his experiments: he found it difficult to keep track of which row he was on unless he filled in the cross-hatchings as he went. A number of the archaeological plaques illustrate this design problem. One of these was found at the large passage grave of Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal) (Figure 3.15a). It is a Classic checkerboard plaque, made up of six registers. The top four registers appear perfectly fine. But in the fifth register one of the checkerboard spaces was broken into three design fields and the left and right field hatched. Why this square was not completely filled is a bit mysterious. Perhaps it was to maintain consistency in having the same number of filled design elements.

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A similar situation occurred in a plaque from Caeira 7 (Évora, Portugal) (Figure 3.15b). Like the previous plaque, it is a Classic checkerboard plaque. It has eight registers, with the checkerboard motif repeated five times. Unlike the maker of the former plaque, this plaque maker appears to have started hatching the squares from the bottom registers to the top. Thus the bottom three registers are fine. But the fifth register from the top has a square divided into two, with the left side hatched. The engraver also seems to have started from the right to the left, because the problems do not occur on the rightmost design elements. As in the plaque from Comenda da Igreja, the engraver’s aim appears to have been to maintain a constant number of hatched squares (in this case, five). If the engraver had simply continued filling in alternate squares, only four squares would have been filled. This is the best explanation I can offer for such a curious piece. The numerical consistency could reflect a kind of aesthetic, but it might also suggest that the number of these engraved fields conveyed information that had to be depicted in a very particular way. Consistent numbers of design elements were not, however, demonstrated in all Classic checkerboard plaques. Indeed, many Classic plaques had alternating registers of design elements that were one iteration different from the register above and below (Figure 3.16a, b). Thus this idiosyncrasy can be taken as a personal tic of the engraver rather than part of a generalized practice of element consistency. Another point this illustrates is that the design elemental frequency may have been important for some engravers or in some situations but was not so in all cases. The previous examples all involve Classic checkerboards. Do plaques of other types give some indication as to the importance of the design elements? A number of plaques designed with triangle motifs contain some suggestions that the number of motifs may have been of some importance. In the Hoe plaque from Crato (Portalegre, Portugal) (Figure 3.17a) we see a composite plaque, with two registers of triangles of three triangles each. The triangles on the first register are fairly even, but in the second register the third triangle had to be squeezed in. A similar thing occurred with a Classic plaque from Brissos 6 (Évora, Portugal) (Figure 3.17b). It has three registers of six triangles, although the sixth triangle on the first register was squeezed in. From a certain aesthetic point of view, it was not necessary, because the triangles already filled the register field. But it seems that having the same number of triangles on each register was important for this engraver. As in the case of the Classic checkerboard plaques, however, in numerous instances the number of triangles in each register differed by one or more. There are few other examples of design corrections. One, which presents quite an interesting case, is a plaque from Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal) (Figure 3.18). It is a Classic plaque, made up of two registers of four triangles. But if one looks carefully at the second register, the first three triangles appear to have been first outlined as hollowed out triangles. Then, for some unknown reason, they

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f ig u r e 3 . 16. a, Cabeço (Portalegre, Portugal). b, Passo 1 (Évora, Portugal).

were filled in. The hatching for these internal triangle fields is different; indeed, the original outline for these hollowed out areas can still be discerned. To summarize: in engraving a plaque the engraver often seemed to place a high priority on the number of registers and in some cases the number of design elements (I return to this point in Chapter 5).

Perforation Many plaques were perforated, and the operational sequence indicated in the archaeological plaques suggests that perforations were created after the design elements were engraved. Of those plaques in ESPRIT with perforations, 75 percent were biconical, and 25 percent were conical. Macroscopic and microscopic observation of the perforations on these plaques indicated concentric striations consistent with the use of a hard stone drill. In our experiments two drills were used to perforate the plaques manually. For most of the plaques an expedient drill made of novaculite (a form of chert) was used; but due to resharpening it was eventually reduced to nothing. A more carefully knapped, heat-treated chert drill was used to drill two of the plaques. Neither drill was hafted. Prior to drilling, the engraving tool was used to create a little in-

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dentation on the desired spot for the perforation. This indentation helped to keep the tip of the drill in place for the first few rotations. The drill was held in the right hand between the thumb and forefinger, while the plaque was held in the other hand (Figure 3.19). Drilling was accomplished by the repeated, simultaneous twisting of both the drill and the plaque half a rotation in opposite directions. Once the perforation was about halfway complete, the plaque was flipped over, the drill was lined up, and the process was repeated from the other side. Sometimes the drill holes did not line up perfectly; this was a problem that we apparently shared with ancient plaque makers, because a number of plaques have redone perforations. Overall, the whole perforation process took about ten minutes when using the techniques described (Figure 3.20). This time included drill maintenance, though not the manufacture of a drill. When we used an expedient chert drill, we noticed that secondary protrusions on the chert would occasionally scratch the surface of

f ig u r e 3 . 1 7. a, Crato (Portalegre, Portugal). b, Brissos 6 (Évora, Portugal). Photograph by author, courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia.

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f ig u r e 3 . 1 8. Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal). Photograph by author, courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia.

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f ig u r e 3 . 19. Alexander Woods perforating a plaque.

the plaque, resulting in a distinctive semicircular scratch running parallel to the edge of the perforation. This sort of technical marker would be something that archaeologists could potentially find on a plaque.

Organization of Production Based on these replication experiments, it would be impossible to say exactly how long it took Neolithic peoples to produce a slate plaque. There are too many variables involved. From our experiences, however, it would be safe to say that the production of an engraved slate plaque (including its shaping, polishing, and en-

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f ig u r e 3 .2 0. A finished plaque.

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graving) was probably never much more than a full day’s work at most. Slate is an easily worked medium, and slate plaques can be rapidly produced by individuals with relatively little skill, as we can attest. I have focused on the production of the plaques. But who did the producing? Who were the artisans who carefully fashioned these pieces of dark stone into durable and compelling forms of visual culture? Once again the clues are scarce. There is the stylistic evidence, as discussed in Chapter 1. To reiterate, the plaques manifest two in some ways contradictory qualities. On the one hand, they display a highly insistent and regularized structure and set of designs. This formal standardization would suggest some degree of specialization (Costin 1991) or at least a shared and rigorously followed set of rules on how they should appear. On the other hand, the styles in which the plaques were engraved are highly variable, which suggests that these specialists worked somewhat independently of each other. Yet, even within this high level of stylistic variability, some groups of plaques display very similar stylistic “quirks” or signatures that seem indicative of an individual or perhaps a small group of individuals who worked closely together. Often these stylistically similar plaques are found in sites reasonably close to each other and sometimes in the same tombs. Figure 3.21a–x summarizes and illustrates some of these idiosyncratic features. Describing these features is more difficult than describing the plaques’ structure and the organization of their design elements. But, I argue, these differences exist—in the orthogonality (or nonorthogonality) of the linear incisions, in the symmetry (or asymmetry) of the design elements, in the degree of curvature of collars and straps, and in unusual designs. Because of the way I studied these plaques in museums and publications— which was usually by site assemblage—it was admittedly easier to notice those features found among plaques from the same site than among those from different sites, and this might accentuate the impression of homogeneity within sites. Later querying of these features among all the plaques in ESPRIT helped to correct this bias to some degree. It is also true that it is easier to discern similarities in style within a given plaque type. In other words, it is easier to detect similar stylistic idiosyncrasies among Classic plaques with similar design elements and more difficult to detect stylistic similarities between, for example, a Classic plaque and a Rug plaque. Thus, while it is certainly possible that engravers specialized in certain plaque types, this impression may be somewhat skewed by the nature of the analysis. It also occurred to me in the early phases of my analysis that the idiosyncrasies I was detecting might be those of the archaeological illustrators, rather than of the plaque engravers. As noted in Chapter 1, however, most illustrators were surprisingly faithful in reproducing both the style and the actual design of the plaques. What does this preliminary examination of the stylistic variability of the plaques indicate about their production and their producers? First, it appears that many plaques did not travel long distances after being produced. Indeed, when we

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recall that the plaques may have only taken a few hours to produce and that other offerings within the tombs (such as polished stone tools) were unused, it seems reasonable to conclude that the plaques were made expressly for a person at the time of his or her death. Furthermore, the overall impression from the material record is of a small-scale production carried out among a limited number of part-time specialists (perhaps one or two hundred?). The stylistic evidence suggests that many of the engravers of the plaques were closely tied to a burial site and the populations associated with that tomb. We seem to have a case of attached specialists here. Unlike typical attached specialists (Brumfiel and Earle 1987; Costin 1991), they may not have been distinguished by the particular skill involved in making the plaques or the amount of labor involved. A dramatic range of skills is represented in the plaques, which might have taken no more than two to three hours to produce. These individuals may have been specialists by virtue of their cognitive abilities, such as their specialized knowledge or memory. These artisans may have focused on producing certain kinds of plaques; but that assessment must remain tentative (given the sources of bias already described) until more objective measures of style between plaque types can be developed. Some types, however, such as the Biomorph Whiskered plaques, show a high degree of stylistic uniformity among plaques of wide geographic distribution. Was their engraver an itinerant artist? Or were the plaques traded (or raided) and transported over a wide area?

use Once a plaque was created, how was it then used prior to its deposition in a tomb? The perforations are perhaps our best clue. Among the hundreds of plaques that I was able to handle, most showed no signs of wear in their perforation. The original striations from the drilling were often preserved perfectly, which was surprising, given the softness of slate. I should note, however, that some plaques do indeed show a high degree of wear on their perforations, such as a plaque from Rogil (Faro, Portugal) (Figure 3.22), which strongly suggests that some plaques were suspended and/or moved for some time. It is also relevant to note that plaques in mu-

f ig u r e 3 . 2 1 . (op p o s i t e pa g e) Examples of plaques with similar stylistic idiosyncrasies from the same or adjacent tombs. a and b, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). c and d, Comenda 1 and 2 (Évora, Portugal). e, f, and g, Granja de Céspedes (Badajoz, Spain). h and i, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). j, k, and l, Pedra Branca (Setúbal, Portugal). m and n, Cabeço da Arruda (Lisbon, Portugal). o and p, Aljezur (Faro, Portugal). q and r, Cova da Moura (Lisbon, Portugal). s and t, Escoural (Évora, Portugal). u and v, Couta da Biscaia 1 (Portalegre, Portugal). w and x, Lameira (Portalegre, Portugal).

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f ig u r e 3 .2 2 . Plaque from Rogil (Faro, Portugal), with wear on the perforation. Photograph by author, courtesy of Câmara Municipal de Lagos—Museu Municipal Dr. José Formosinho, Lagos, Portugal.

seums sometimes had small tags (with the plaques’ accession numbers written on them) tied around the perforation; if these were ever suspended, they would probably also produce some wear. The question that naturally arose from observing so many unworn perforations was whether it would be possible for plaques to have been suspended with cordage on a person (living/moving or dead) or an immobile object yet not show any signs of wear. Thus Woods and I carried out a second phase of experiments designed to determine what sorts of wear patterns would form on the plaques and their perforations to learn more about their possible biographies. In order to accommodate the cordage we were using (wool, flax, horsehair, leather, buckskin—all raw materials available in the Iberian Neolithic), perforations had to be made much larger than those present on the original archaeological plaques. Indeed, many of the perforations on archaeological plaques appear so tiny (from photographs and illustrations) that only a thin fiber or a few strands of hair could possibly have been threaded through them. Perforations this small made us wonder what fiber was used to suspend these plaques and, in fact, whether these plaques were threaded and suspended at all. Perforations were easy to produce, and time or labor would certainly not have imposed any limitations on the size of a perforation (it only took a few minutes to widen a perforation considerably). The perforations observed on most plaques show no wear, which makes it possible to entertain the notion that at least some of the plaques were never threaded and that their perforations may have been more symbolic than functional. Eight slate plaques of varying weights and qualities were produced for this phase

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of the experiment (Figure 3.23a and b). All were 1:1 replicas of actual plaques; most were copies of plaques from Olival da Pega (Gonçalves 1999a). Six of the plaques were strung with different cordage materials and distributed to students and staff (including myself) in the University of Iowa Department of Anthropology. Two of the eight plaques served as experimental controls. One spent the duration of the experiment sitting in an unlit drawer, and one was hung from our laboratory ceiling by a leather cord (Figure 3.24). The six of us who participated in the experiment agreed to wear the plaques around our neck for one month during daylight/ work hours. We were not required to wear our plaques while giving important presentations (although I taught with mine), participating in athletic activities, or going out on dates. Woods wanted everyone to be as comfortable as possible participating in this experiment. Our group agreed to report to Woods if our cordage required maintenance and to make note of any circumstance surrounding plaque breakage or damage. The plaques did not spend an equal amount of time being worn. They were worn longer on some days than on others. Sometimes informants would forget to put on their plaques until noon (as I often did), and on rare occasions they would forget to take them off when they got home (rarely a problem for me). Different informants had longer work hours, woke up at different times, and had different interpretations of what exactly qualified as daylight hours. Informants were not

f ig u r e 3 .2 3 . a, Six of the plaques used in our experiment. b, Experiment participants wearing their plaques upon completion of the experiment. Photograph by Morten Schlütter.

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f ig u r e 3 .2 4 . Control plaque suspended from the ceiling of the laboratory.

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required to keep track of how many hours they wore their plaques each day; nor were they required to keep a journal or plaque diary of any sort. Such an activity would have put an extra burden on the already (literally) burdened informants (who received no compensation) and discouraged participation. Additionally, that level of precision was deemed unnecessary. Given that the one-month experimental duration was entirely arbitrary, and not knowing anything about how Neolithic peoples may have worn the original plaques, it seemed best to allow informants the freedom to incorporate the plaques into their lives as they best saw fit. A small amount of variability was in this instance both desirable and unavoidable. All our informants were academics, so the plaques were subjected to a large number of academic situations and activities. All the plaques were worn while typing, note taking, and doing lab work and, as a result, were bumped against tables, desks, chairs, microscopes, computer keyboards, filing cabinets, and other pieces of academic equipment. Obviously many of these activities would not have occurred during the Neolithic, and the high frequency with which the experimental plaques were hit against table-edges certainly resulted in a new source of wear. All the plaques were also worn (both over and under clothes) while consuming food and walking, however, and individual plaques were worn while gardening, flintknapping, making other plaques, and using an atlatl (Woods was the coach of the University of Iowa Atlatl Team). While plaques worn by Neolithic people may well have been subjected to different situations, the basic mechanics of human motion remain the same. Thus the same general effects of daily handling and movement should be expressed adequately on the experimental slate plaques.

Surface Wear The surface of a slate plaque directly above the perforation (the area under the cordage) was especially subject to wear. Staining and/or polishing of this area was clearly visible to the naked eye on five of the six experimental plaques worn by informants (Figure 3.25). It is quite possible that different cordage materials could be distinguishable through microscopic wear analysis. No such wear was observed on the control plaques. Flax fiber was used for two of the plaques, and a subtle polish on one of these could be seen. The other plaque with flax cordage had a subtle polish across nearly the entire plaque, which could explain the lack of discernible wear above its perforation.

Mobility Although it may seem obvious, the plaques, while being worn, were prone to swaying, twisting, and all sorts of unpredictable movement. While it is certainly possible to wear a plaque on a daily basis, they were a noticeable impediment to nearly all activities except walking slowly and standing up straight. It was, for example, dif-

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f ig u r e 3 .25. Wear pattern on one of the experimental plaques.

ficult to run or dance effectively while wearing a plaque outside one’s clothing. Furthermore, the plaques had a tendency to bump into things. For instance, I would have injured my young son had I not held the plaque toward my body while talking to him. Indeed, when interviewed, all informants listed the plaques’ movements as one of the top two problems with wearing a slate plaque. The most important thing about plaque movement, however, was that any rapid bodily movement or bending of the torso would usually cause the plaque to flip over, though this could probably have been mitigated by using different methods of stringing the cordage material. Still, unless constantly maintained and attended to, a plaque will be reversed for approximately 50 percent of the time it is being worn. Given that over 90 percent of the plaques were only engraved on one side, their engraved side was probably only visible about half the time if they were used while people were moving to any significant degree.

Oil Absorption Slate is a very soft, somewhat porous stone, and we quickly discovered that the experimental plaques stained when contacted by human hands. Stains manifested as dark, somewhat shiny patches on a plaque’s surface that decreased the visibility of engraved lines. After about a week of being worn, the entire surface of nearly all the experimental plaques was stained. By the end of the experimental period, only one of the worn plaques and the control plaques exhibited any remaining color in the lines. When newly engraved, the pattern on a plaque could easily be seen from quite a distance in any light. When they were completely stained, it was nearly 108

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impossible to tell that the plaques were engraved from more than a few feet away. Unless the light hit the surface just right, it could be difficult to make out the pattern on a plaque worn around one’s own neck. Unfortunately, these oils are organic and will degrade with prolonged exposure to oxygen. Following the completion of the experimental period all eight plaques were left on a table in a locked laboratory for about two months. Over the course of that period the engravings, which had been completely obscured on all but one of the six utilized plaques, had returned to their original white color and were completely visible on all but one of the experimental plaques. Five thousand years give any oils absorbed by the original plaques plenty of time to oxidize. As a result, it is probably impossible to use oil absorption as a measure of ancient plaque handling.

Experiment Conclusions While hardly revolutionary, our use-wear experiment raised some interesting points. The plaques’ perforations do show wear with use, and we should see this wear if they were worn by living and moving people. Wear analysis of the plaques would certainly be a fruitful avenue of research, and more studies should be conducted in the future to measure and determine patterning in the degree of wear by plaque type and region. It is important to note, however, that we will need to develop an objective way to measure the nature and degree of wear exhibited. Furthermore, while the plaques are recognizable objects in and of themselves, their engraved imagery could not have served a useful symbolic purpose if the plaques were worn with any frequency. It would be rapidly obscured by bodily oils and would spend 50 percent of the time reversed. The single-sided nature of the vast majority of the plaques and the frequency of minute perforations lead us to believe that many plaques may well have served as stationary markers, as on a corpse. In other words, the engraved slate plaques were most likely created at the time of a person’s death and used strictly in mortuary contexts.

Discussion The perforations on the plaques provide one of the few pieces of relatively unambiguous sources of evidence for the biographies of the plaques. As noted in Chapter 2, not all plaques had perforations and not all have the same degree of wear on their perforations. Furthermore, some rare plaques appear to have had perforations created some time after their original use. For example, a plaque from Alapraia 2 (Lisbon, Portugal) (Gonçalves 1995: Est. 20, 21) appears to have had its three perforations created after the original “version” of the plaque had been completed and possibly used for some time. Thus the plaques must have experienced different biographies. Are there any patterns in this variability? As noted, plaque types are strongly correlated with the number of perforations. But the plaques were, after all, partially classified based 109

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on the number of their perforations, so this may not be significant. For example, all the Biomorphs (Simple and Whiskered) are perforated, as are all the Strappy plaques and most of the Hoes (with the exception of one). These types are also some of the largest, so perhaps the holes are correlated with both the plaques’ functions and their biographies. In addition to correlations between perforations, size, and type, however, there are spatial patterns. Specifically, the vast majority of nonperforated plaques are found in the Alentejo region. For example, numerous plaques without perforations were found at Olival da Pega (Évora, Portugal) (12 out of 41). In contrast, nonperforated plaques are rare in the Lisbon and Setúbal peninsulas. The use of perforations may be correlated to plaque type, size, and the plaques’ spatial distribution in part because the perforations (and the plaques) reflect different Neolithic ritual practices through southwestern Iberia. Given that the earliest plaques are most likely those from the slate-rich zones of the Alentejo and Extremadura, the presence of perforations in plaques of the Lisbon and Setúbal areas may reflect a change in these practices over time. Perhaps, as Gonçalves (1999b:87) suggested, plaques with holes were suspended around the actual body of the deceased, while those without holes were associated with a secondary burial (without a preserved neck around which to hang a plaque) or were placeholders for subsequent burials. Employing this model, groups in the Alentejo may have practiced secondary burials more regularly. The near-exclusive use of perforations in the plaques in the Lisbon and Setúbal peninsulas may reflect a shift to the more exclusive practice of primary inhumations in these regions.

r e c yc l i ng Many plaques (33 in ESPRIT ) show clear signs of experiencing an “afterlife” (see Chapter 2 and Gonçalves et al. 2003), although the time that elapsed between their original creation and this secondary modification is unknown. The three kinds of formal recycling, or reuse that involved the modification of form, include: 1. fragmentation and repolishing; 2. fragmentation, repolishing, and reperforation; 3. fragmentation, repolishing, reengraving, and reperforation.

Recycling in the forms of (1) and (3) is relatively uncommon, whereas cases of (2) are the most typical. It is interesting to note that in all cases of recycling the plaques (or plaque pendants) either maintained the original perforation (it appears) or had a new perforation created. This may again illustrate something about the motivations for their reuse. For example, plaques may have been recycled to serve as objects worn by the living for a period or to be placed on the body of a new corpse. 110

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f ig u r e 3 .2 6. a, Avis (Portalegre, Portugal). b, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal). Photographs by author, courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia.

f ig u r e 3 .27. The chapel of São Dinis, built over a megalithic tomb, in the town center of Pavia, Portugal. Photograph by Morten Schlütter.

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extr action

Quarrying

Shaping (flaking)

manufacture

Shaping (flaking)

Grinding

Engraving of Top/Base Line

Engraving of Registers

Engraving of Design Elements

Hatching

Perforation

Display

use Burial Removal f ig u r e 3 .2 8. Possible trajectories in the biography of a plaque.

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The plaques’ lives did not end in prehistory, however. Even prior to their excavation and study by archaeologists, local villagers apparently added their own touches to the plaques. The thinness of the incisions and the highly atypical imagery of these engravings suggest that these are indeed the product of a relatively recent use of these plaques. In a Strappy plaque from Avis (Portalegre, Portugal) (Figure 3.26a), a fish was drawn near the top with thin and superficial incisions, perhaps with a metal knife. It is possible that the fish was a way of “Christianizing” or “depaganizing” the plaque, in a manner analogous to the occasional adaptation of megalithic tombs into Christian shrines in the Portuguese Alentejo (Figure 3.27). On the reverse of another plaque (Figure 3.26b), from Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal), we see a long-haired person holding what seems to be a hafted axe and wearing around the neck—a plaque! There is also a large X crossed over this engraving as well as some lines outlining the border of the side of the plaque.

su m m a ry Given these disparate lines of evidence and analyses, what can we conclude about the biographies of the Iberian plaques? First, their biographies certainly had multiple possible trajectories (Figure 3.28). Some plaques were perforated, others were not; some were reused, and others apparently were not. There are also regional differences, such as in the rarity of nonperforated plaques in Lisbon and Setúbal. Most likely their typical biographies evolved over time. Finally, it is also clear that a plaque was moved—in some cases over hundreds of kilometers—throughout its life history, beginning with the extraction of its raw material from a quarry, to the place where it was fashioned into a roughout, and then to the location of its intended deposition in a burial. Whether plaques, in general, spent much time in settlement areas being displayed is unclear. The rare plaques found in settlement contexts are primarily fragments; but whether they were pieces broken during manufacture or while being used, worn, or displayed at that settlement or relics taken from a burial cannot be known at this time.

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fou r

ag e nc y a n d a mbigu i t y

S

o far I have primarily discussed the plaques as objects that were acted upon and manipulated by individuals and groups, and I return to this approach in the next chapter. Viewing material culture as the medium onto which and through which human agency acts is the traditional approach in archaeology and, when carried out with multiple methodologies, can indeed produce rich and varied insights. But an approach to material culture that views it merely as a passive receptacle of human values, skills, desires, needs, and information is incomplete. Material culture itself has an agency (Gell 1998; Wobst 2000; Dobres and Robb 2000:8), and the plaques are no exception. In a kinesthetic sense the plaques’ materiality—their material, form, and imagery—provoked (and provokes) and constrained (and constrains) the movement of human bodies, eyes, and minds. Their production, display, and disposal contributed to the structuring of social and cultural behavior (Giddens 1986). In this chapter I explore the different dimensions of the agency of the plaques, particularly in their imagery, employing insights from visual psychology, neurobiology, the anthropology of art, and visual culture studies. The physical and material properties of the Iberian plaques play an important role in their agency. The small scale of a plaque encourages the viewer to come close to it and to be still: it provokes intimacy. Its small size also restricts the number of people that can effectively see or read its imagery at any given time: it provokes secrecy. Its delicately incised engravings focus the viewer’s concentration: it commands our attention. Its symmetry is aesthetically pleasing, as symmetry in things—as well as in faces and human relationships—tends to be (Washburn and Crowe 1988:16; Enquist and Arak 1994; Washburn 1999). In general, a plaque creates a mental and physical space for privacy, reflection, and pleasurable concentration. As such, the plaques act in some of the same ways as do Neolithic European figurines in general, as argued recently by Douglass Bailey (2005). There are some important differences, however. The two-dimensionality of the plaques, usually with only one side engraved, channels and fi xes the attention of the viewer toward a singular view. In contrast, the three-dimensional figurines of the Neolithic invite the viewer into a tactile and palpable realm, leading to multiple views. Ambiguities in the form and imagery of the plaques also contribute to their

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f ig u r e 4 . 1 . The Necker cube.

agency. These ambiguities are of two varieties, low-level perceptual and high-level semantic ambiguity, and both ambiguities contribute to stilling the mind. In lowlevel perceptual ambiguity, two or more perceptual “readings” or interpretations occur without a change in stimulus (Stadler and Kruse 1995:5). Indeed, these readings seem to “oscillate” back and forth in the mind’s eye. Such multistable images often involve ambiguous fields and grounds, the classic case being the Necker cube (Figure 4.1). In Chapter 2 I discuss this kind of ambiguity in the case of the plaques with ambiguous fields and grounds. To review, for most plaques, the hatched design elements are complete and regular in contrast to the unhatched elements. In these cases it appears that the hatched elements were meant to be the design field, whereas the unhatched dark elements were intended to be the ground. In some plaques, however, some of the engraved elements are regular and complete, while some of their unengraved elements are also complete and regularly shaped. This multistability occurs in a number of the Classic and Transitional triangle plaques, particularly those found in sites of the Lisbon area (Figure 2.16). 115

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In addition to these lower-level ambiguities, the plaques also display higherlevel semantic ambiguities, evoking multiple, sometimes contradictory, meanings through their form and design. For example, they are made of hard stone, yet their designs often evoke the suppleness of textiles. They are axe-shaped, yet they sometimes have eyes. Some plaques have animal features, some appear humanlike, and some appear to be combinations of these different beings. Indeed, the plaques challenge a whole suite of binary oppositions and discrete material classifications: inanimate/animate, human/animal, and stone/textile. We could argue, however, that our entire visual world is ambiguous. Even in an act as low-level as depth perception our mind must deal with ambiguities, since images have only two dimensions when they reach our eyes. Our mind must actively choose among countless interpretations in translating this input into three dimensions for us to “see” depth. Thus ambiguities—whether visual or linguistic—are part of our day-to-day life and are “more than merely freak phenomena,” to use the words of psychologist A. C. Zimmer (1995). The notion of “embracing ambiguity” may be misconceived. Ambiguity has already embraced us. How should we treat ambiguous visual images from the past? Are there universal laws of visual perception? Or do culture and individual experience play a critical role in this perception? As primates, humans share an overwhelming dependence on vision and similarities in visual perception, particularly in lower-level processing such as depth perception. There can also be subtle differences due to cultural and individual experience, however, which should make us cautious in universalizing visual perception. These differences are most common in the higherlevel perception of semantic ambiguities (such as the classic old lady/young lady illusion) and when lower-level depth perception intersects with cultural experience. For example, Marshall H. Segall et al. (1966) reported that the Müller-Lyer illusion (Figure 4.2) may be absent or reduced among people who grow up in certain environments. Among Westerners, the two lines appear to be of different lengths—though they are the same length. The authors tested the responses of 1878 non-Western peoples, including the Zulu in South Africa, who at the time lived in circular huts with arched doorways and had little experience of Westernstyle rectangular buildings. The Africans studied were less affected by the MüllerLyer illusion than were the Americans, and the Zulu were the group least affected. The argument offered was that the Zulu lived in a “circular culture,” whereas those who are more subject to the illusion live in a “carpentered world” of rectangles and parallel lines. Europeans and Americans, apparently, are more likely to interpret oblique and acute angles as displaced right angles and to perceive two-dimensional drawings in terms of depth. If depth perception is culturally influenced, then certainly the semantic qualities of the plaques are as well. Thus it is quite possible that many of the ambiguities that we perceive today in the plaques and that trap our minds—such as the conflation or referencing of multiple beings—are not likely to have been shared by their original users. We might consider, however, the possibility that some of this ambiguity was 116

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f ig u r e 4 .2 . The Müller-Lyer illusion.

also perceived by the plaques’ ancient users and may even have been intentionally created to make these images memorable and to produce “mind traps.” Artists in different cultural traditions have certainly experimented with ambiguity and multistability in their art. Salvador Dalí’s famous Three Ages (1940) and M. C. Escher’s work are familiar twentieth-century European examples, but these expressive techniques are also found on Marquesan tortoise-shell art (Gell 1998:188) and Mimbres pottery (Style II, AD 900–1000) of the American Southwest (Figure 4.3). To accept these visual ambiguities and to appreciate their virtuosity is one thing. But to interpret and make sense of them is another matter, and for this task I find the work of Christopher Tilley (1999) on material metaphors relevant. Tilley cites the work of Frederik Barth (1975), who made the important point that, unlike linguistic metaphors, material metaphors are not entirely arbitrary. That is, when materializing ideas or properties, some inherent connection generally exists between form and meaning. In Barth’s work on the Baktaman of highland Papua New Guinea, for example, the meanings of pigs as symbols are linked to what pigs do and how they behave. As a way of better understanding the plaques’ visual properties and the ambiguities in their imagery, I wish now to consider their possible metaphorical qualities.

t h e a x e n e ss of t h e pl aqu e s The formal similarities between the engraved plaques and stone axes are striking and have been noted by scholars such as the Leisners (Leisner and Leisner 1951). The 117

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f ig u r e 4 .3 . A Mimbres bowl from the Mattocks site.

plaques and stone tools are roughly the same size (about the size of a human hand) and the same form (trapezoidal or rectangular). They are both dark gray/black. Plaques and polished stone tools are also contemporary and indeed are often found together in Late Neolithic burial contexts. Their raw materials, as I have noted, are even sourced to the same region of Portugal—the Alentejo. And the experimental studies discussed in Chapter 3 made clear that the technology and physical actions required to make a slate plaque are nearly identical to those used in manufacturing a polished stone tool, although making an engraved plaque would have taken far less time. I do not think, however, that the plaques represented axes in an isomorphous way, despite their strong resemblance. Rather, I suggest that the engraved plaques of Iberia referenced axes and that axes were potent visual metaphors for these ancient 118

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agricultural peoples, as they were throughout western Europe during later prehistory (Edmonds 1995; Skeates 2002). A plaque evoked “axeness,” with its power to transform a forest into a field and to transform a live and threatening enemy into a dead and safe enemy. An axe evoked strength and durability. It was a tool essential in the construction of social and cultural personhood. Axes made one human. Many richly textured studies of polished stone tools exist in the ethnographic literature, all of which point to the symbolic potency of these objects. For the Maori, for example, ceremonial greenstone adzes or toki poutangata (“the adze which establishes man in authority” [Riley 1994:25]) have been, and are, considered taonga (treasures), in which family and lineage histories are symbolically inscribed. Adzes with particularly important life histories have names (Best 1974:183). The Maori aphorism “Though the adze be small, yet does it equal a man” reflects the central role of groundstone tools in the construction of Maori personhood (Davidson 1987:61). For Ormu chiefs of Irian Jaya, axes that are large and have long histories are visible signs of chiefly rank (Pétrequin and Pétrequin 1993). To Sabarl Islanders, polished axes are classified linguistically as animate (Battaglia 1983). The Trobrianders used polished axe blades as imperishable wealth and heirlooms; they could also be used to comfort a dying man by being rubbed against his chest or belly (Malinowski 1934:196). Among the Yir Yoront of north Queensland (Sharp 1952), axes were symbols of age and masculinity. The axes belonged to older men, and women and younger men who wanted to use them had to borrow them. Among the Siane of highland New Guinea, men without axes were said to be “like women” (Salisbury 1962:49). Axe imagery in ancient Europe is, I suggest, analogous to the present-day use of the shield in Western visual culture. When we take the time to look at our visual world, the shield is an alarmingly common image. It is found on all manner of insignia and logos (such as those of the police and military), family coats of arms, universities (Yale University), posh cities (Beverly Hills) and automobiles, various European countries (Portugal), country clubs, the United Postal Service, the U.S. road system, and home security systems (Figure 4.4a–c). As the “real” shield defends and protects, the image of the shield evokes these same qualities as well as related ones, such as social exclusivity, power, reliability, and enduring corporate identity. The shield is clearly a key metaphor in Western culture (Tilley 1999:31–33), as I suggest the axe was in ancient Iberia. And shields, like slate plaques, can have eyes and other body parts. They can become fused with people and animals, as in the case of the great seal of the United States (Figure 4.5). Few of us seem terribly bothered by these conflations that generate polysemic readings. We might ask, why make a plaque at all if one can make a stone tool? Some insights into possible answers come from considering the material properties of these different stone objects. On its own, a stone axe cannot be manipulated in many visual ways. The stones used to make polished stone axes and other tools in ancient Iberia were generally hard metamorphic rocks, such as amphibolite, or igneous rocks, such as basalt or dolerite (Lillios 1997). Stones have different visual proper119

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f ig u r e 4 . 4 . Shield imagery in contemporary Western visual culture. a, Cadillac logo. b, ATA (American Taekwondo Association) patch. c, Yale University seal.

f ig u r e 4 .5. The United States great seal.

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ties, such as their color or brilliance (Taçon 1991; Cooney 2002), and axes can be polished to varying degrees or covered in oil to create a bedazzling shine. But the same qualities that make an axe desirable as a functional tool (namely, its hardness and durability) also make it difficult to alter visually after the stone is selected. Such complexity of meaning possibly could have been conveyed, however, through engravings on the tool’s wooden or bone handle or in the weave of its lashing, as was the case for axes made by the Maori (Best 1974). What we can say for certain is that the plaques were made of a soft yet durable stone, which could be formed and easily engraved within a few hours. Recent archaeological excavations in Spain have provided tantalizing evidence that some plaques were painted, thus suggesting that the plaques were modified in multiple and complex ways. At the burial site of Trincones 1 (Cáceres, Spain), for example, some of the plaques were colored with a red pigment; chemical analyses identified the pigment as cinnabar (Bueno Ramírez et al. 2000b:147–149). An object made of slate in the form of an axe offered a rich potential for inscribing and materializing a suite of qualities and information relating to the durability or identity of an individual or group. A slate plaque was the ideal symbolic palette for creating enduring imagery in ancient Iberia. Slate—in both its material and linguistic form—has similar metaphorical properties even today. A cursory Google search for “slate plaque” retrieves a dizzying array of businesses eager to sell engraved plaques for all sorts of purposes. For homeowners wishing to make their homes more decorative yet distinguished, vendors sell slate plaques as address markers, welcome signs, garden stones, and house signs. Slate plaques are also popular funerary markers, valued for their “inscriptability” as well as their dark color, which evokes solemnity in Western culture, and all-weather durability. At a number of sites, people can even purchase personalized slate memorials with portraits of their beloved four-legged companions. Our metaphorical use of phrases with the English word “slate” (such as “to begin with a clean slate,” “to wipe the slate clean,” and “a blank slate”) refers to the same properties of slate that made it a desirable medium for inscriptive recordkeeping and memorializing in ancient Iberia.

l i m i n a l a n i m a l s, l i m i n a l pe opl e In Totemism Claude Lévi-Strauss (1963:89) wrote that “animals are good to think.” Many scholars have expanded on the ways in which animals can be powerful metaphors for structuring the social, moral, and political world of humans (e.g., Douglas 1957; Willis 1990). The work of Mary Helms, the North American cultural anthropologist, exemplifies the rich insights that can be gained by applying the Lévi-Strauss dictum to material culture. In many of her publications Helms has explored the use of animals as visual metaphors in ancient Mesoamerican and Central American cultures (Helms 1977, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000). She has devoted 121

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much of this research to understanding the animal imagery on the ceramics of the Coclé chiefdoms of ancient Panama, dating from AD 500–1100. Applying structural analyses and assuming elemental forms of meaning from ethnohistoric cultures in the Americas, Helms has sought to determine the underlying grammar and emic meaning of Coclé ceramics, which are replete with representations of the boa constrictor, curassow, deer, and iguana—all animals found in the tropical forests of Central America. Sometimes features of these animals are combined, as in the iguana-boa (Helms 2000:54–75). These animals, she argued, reference original places and times for Panamanian chiefs and thus serve as “legitimizing first principle cosmological powers and identities essential for their own anomalous existence as both living and future ancestors” (Helms 2000:11). I now wish to explore what I consider to be the animal imagery on the Iberian plaques. This is not an entirely new idea. Gimbutas interpreted the biomorphism of the plaques (as well as that of the other ocular objects of late prehistoric Iberia, such as ceramics, bone phalanges, and statue menhirs) as features of the Mother Goddess in her form as the Owl Goddess (Gimbutas 1991:205, 238, 239, 299). Her sweeping narratives are indeed provocative and force us to consider and explain the large-scale regional similarities in certain classes of prehistoric European material culture. My thinking on the Iberian plaques, however, differs in a number of critical ways. First, I do not think that all the plaques depict owl imagery; nor do I think that all double-perforated plaques represent the eyes of these owls, as she suggested (Gimbutas 1991:298, Fig. 7-120.2). Furthermore, I believe the biomorphic plaques are referencing not a generic owl but a very specific and identifiable owl: the barn owl (Tyto alba). Finally, while Gimbutas (1991:238–239) suggested that the Owl Goddess was a symbol of both regeneration and death, she did not explain why owls should be adopted and privileged in the visual culture of late prehistoric communities in southern Iberia and how such imagery structured human behavior. She also did not consider the role of context or media—its scale, form, or raw material—in the meaning of this imagery. When I first approached the Iberian plaques, I was not particularly interested in these biomorphic plaques, because I felt that they had led prehistorians into fairly unproductive paths for too long. But at a certain point in my research I began to wonder why they had attracted so much attention, considering that they are actually quite rare. Indeed, these few ocular plaques seem to have blinded archaeologists from seeing the plaques in innovative ways and to have distracted them from paying serious attention to the majority of plaques, which do not have “eyes.” Inspired by the thinking of Alfred Gell (1998:68–72), I have come to think that the eyes of these plaques have played a major role in the captivation of archaeologists. Deeply set into the stone, circumscribed by lines, and sometimes drawn with lines radiating from them, the eyes of these plaques draw in the viewers, enmeshing them in a kind of ocular oscillation, in which they see the plaque “seeing” them. On another level, however, the viewer, particularly if an archaeologist, may also

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recognize that these plaques “saw” the eyes of ancient peoples. Thus in its ocularity the plaque functions as a medium for multitemporal intersubjectivities (Gell 1998:116–121). In many cultures ocular imagery is deliberately manipulated to enhance the agency of that object. Eyes can be apotropaic, such as the Turkish göz or nazar boncuk (the evil eye), which works to deflect evil thoughts and intents back onto the viewer and away from the wearer of it (Daugherty 2004:319). In Buddhism, an eye-opening ceremony is conducted before the eyes of a Buddha image (in paintings or sculpture) are painted (Swearer 2004). The painted eyes, according to Buddhists in China and Japan, enliven the image and give it power; they animate the inanimate. And in many cultures the eyes of the dead are closed to signal that the deceased is no longer an agent and can no longer act on its own accord (Danforth 1982:39). When visual artists create images of the dead with their eyes open, a powerfully ambivalent and sinister message about the agency of the dead is produced. A particularly memorable scene from Woody Allen’s 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors comes to mind. The respectable New York ophthalmologist Judah Rosenthal (played by Martin Landau) arrives at the apartment of his mistress, Dolores Paley (played by Anjelica Huston), who has recently been killed by Judah’s brother Jack. Judah finds Dolores lying on the floor, with her eyes open, staring directly into the eyes of her lover, who is, ironically, an eye doctor. But let us not get carried away. These biomorphic plaques have many characteristics other than their eyes, including the two to four subocular lines. They often also have a “nose” (depicted as a long vertical feature, sometimes ending in a triangular point) between the two “eyes.” Many of these beings have two long appendages terminating in three to five digits. These plaques tend to have a much more restricted set of design motifs than do the Classic plaques. The dominant motifs in the Biomorph Simple plaques are zigzags, whereas triangles (particularly inverted triangles) and chevrons predominate in the Biomorph Whiskered plaques. Aside from these design features, the biomorphic plaques of both the Simple and Whiskered variety tend to be engraved on both sides. Of those biomorphic plaques for which information is known about the two sides, 61 percent (20 out of 33) are engraved on both sides, in contrast to the Classic plaques, of which 3 percent (17 out of 603) are engraved on the two sides. Furthermore, the two sides of biomorphic plaques are not designed in the same way; indeed, their reverse appears to suggest the backside of someone or something covered with zigzags, triangles, or chevrons. On some plaques the design even continues from the front and back onto the edges (Figure 4.6). This feature and the overall two-sidedness of these plaques strongly suggest that their engravers were attempting to reproduce something three-dimensional in a two-dimensional medium. For me, as for Gimbutas, these plaques evoked the imagery of birds rather than people. But, unlike Gimbutas, I wondered if a specific bird was being represented, because their features were so regularly recurring. So I decided to speak with an

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f ig u r e 4 .6. Biomorphic plaque from Espadanal (Évora, Portugal).

ornithologist. In the winter of 2003 I met with Kristof Zyskowski, the collections manager for the Ornithology Collection at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Kristof had never seen these plaques, and I did not provide him with any leading questions. I simply stated that I was curious about which birds, if any, these images might be representing. Kristof reasoned that people would most likely notice the anatomical details of larger birds and for this reason honed in on the large European owls. He then proceeded to the collection and pulled out drawer upon drawer of stuffed owls. These larger owls included Asio flammeus (short-eared owl), Asio otus (long-eared owl), Strix aluco (tawny owl), and Bubo bubo (eagle owl) in the Strigidae family and Tyto alba (barn owl) in the Tytonidae family. All the owls of the Strigidae family have ear tufts, however, and none of the plaques seemed to depict this feature. This left Tyto alba, the barn owl, as the strongest candidate; indeed, the similarities in the features of the barn owl and the biomorphic plaques are quite striking (Figure 4.7). The barn owl is a large owl, 14–20 inches (35–50 cm) tall, with long legs, eyes deeply set in a white heart-shaped disk, a white chest, and flammulated (flame-colored) feathering (Parry and Putnam 1979). It is found throughout Portugal and Spain today, where it is a protected species. It is at home both in anthropogenic landscapes (such as agricultural fields) and in forests. It is commonly noticed by people in church towers: hence its designation in Portuguese as coruja das torres (the owl of the towers). In Spain it is known as the lechuza común (common owl). It is a special owl: its high degree of 124

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f ig u r e 4 .7. Tyto alba, the barn owl. Photograph courtesy of Uri Gorfine.

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facial asymmetry—indeed the greatest asymmetry of all the owls—gives it a keen sense of hearing. It is thus a masterful hunter, able to swoop down silently to grab its prey in complete darkness. In addition to their close association with places where people live, barn owls also have other characteristics that would have made them powerful beings or even key metaphors to ancient humans. Their white face gives them a ghostly appearance, and their shriek is eerily humanlike. They are beneficial to farmers, because they hunt rodents that are destructive to crops. But they are also ominous creatures, which seem to appear out of nowhere, striking their prey swiftly, silently, and effectively. Thus they possess powerful oppositional qualities, linking them to life and regeneration as well as to death. Today a great deal of owl folklore exists in Portugal and Spain (Read and Allsop 1994:108–110), as it does in many parts of the world. Vasconcelos (1986:194), in summarizing the findings of earlier folklorists, noted: The people suppose that the owl lives in the towers and roofs of the churches, in order to rob and drink the oil of the lamps . . . If, upon its landing on the roof of a house, one is allowed to hear its hoarse shout or a breath following, which is like the snore of a person with an open mouth, the people understand that the owl is calling someone to the grave; and with the idea of night and neighbors of the cemeteries, they see the owl as a funerary bird and a messenger of death, announcing the most horrible war. Also—the people fear principally the shouts of the owl when there is a sick person in the house.

Yet the barn owl is also understood to be a great ally of farmers. In some areas of Europe special doors have been built in barns to attract the barn owl inside in order to keep the barns free of rats and mice (Stuart 1977:28; Parry and Putnam 1979:100). It is striking how enduring the oppositional qualities and associations of the owl in Europe are. The story does not end here. Curiously, while the Biomorph Simple plaques appear to be rather faithful renditions of barn owls, with featherlike designs on the reverse, other biomorphic plaques are less clear. On some of the Biomorph Whiskered plaques, the reverse does not have “feathers” as on the Biomorph Simple plaques. Instead the reverse depicts what appear to be two tied strings or tassels, as though the strings held up something on the obverse (Figure 4.8a, b). Indeed, these representations suggest that the owl-like “front” of the plaque is a kind of mask. As a working hypothesis, I would like to suggest that these plaques depict people dressed as owls and possibly shamans (Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1998; Winkelman 2003). Ethnographic studies of shamans throughout the world, whether in hunter/gatherer, horticultural, or pastoral societies, point to their many common attributes. One of these is that they tend to be closely identified with animals who “provide powers to heal, divine, diagnose and prophesize, assist in hunting, and engage in sorcery to harm others” (Winkelman 2003:12). Indeed, a shaman, after 126

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f ig u r e 4 .8. Biomorph Whiskered plaques, with “tassels” on reverse. a, Huelva (Huelva, Spain). b, Cueva de la Mora (Huelva, Spain).

entering an altered state of consciousness (usually by ingesting a hallucinogen), often turns into a bird and embarks on a “soul journey.” Scholars interpret the shamans’ feeling of becoming a bird as a physical sensation induced by the ingestion of hallucinogens. Is there any evidence for the use of hallucinogens in ancient Iberia to support Andrew Sherratt’s (1991) suggestion that narcotics, particularly cannabis and poppy (Papaver somniferum), played an important social and ritual role during the Neolithic of Europe? Elisa Guerra-Doce (2002) discusses the evidence to date, which is meager though tantalizing. At the Middle Neolithic site of Cueva de los Murciélagos (Córdoba, Spain) a large number of opium-poppy capsules were found inside the esparto baskets discovered at the site. Poppy remains have also been found at the Late Neolithic sites of Cueva del Toro (Málaga, Spain), at another site named Cueva de los Murciélagos (this one in Granada), and at the mining complex of Can Tintorer (Barcelona). Based on poppy remains found at funerary sites or at sites that are strongly suggestive of this function, Sherratt (1991:52) suggested that poppies—which produce a deathlike sleep—were symbolically linked with death in Neolithic Spain. Numerous poppy seeds were also found preserved at the Late Neolithic site of Buraco da Pala (Bragança, Portugal). In addition to the actual remains of poppy seeds, an object from a Late Neolithic site in Portugal is suggestive of a poppy plant (Figure 4.9b). This is a carved limestone piece from the burial site of Lapa do Fumo (Setúbal) (Leisner 1965: Tafel 153, 2). It is 12 cm long and at one end has a constricted form with a netted pattern. This piece, while distinctive in its constricted “top,” is generally grouped with other carved limestone objects collectively known by Iberian archaeologists as “pinecone idols” (ídolos-pinha, Pinienzapfen) (Figure 4.9). Most are found in burial sites in the Lisbon area (Leisner 1965:210–211, Tafel 153), and they are generally oval in form and netted and have a thickish “stalk.” Louis Siret (1913:281–282) suggested that these objects were representations of the palm tree, a model consistent with his theory of Near Eastern origins for the Iberian Late Neolithic. Gimbutas (1991:203) referred to them as symbols of the phallus. 127

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f ig u r e 4 .9. Limestone so-called pinecone idols from Late Neolithic burials in Portugal. a and c, São Martinho de Sintra (Lisbon). b, Lapa do Fumo (Setúbal). d, Carenque (Lisbon).

I would like to suggest that these objects might be representations of opium plants (Figure 4.10) or mushrooms. Indeed, with the exception of the poppylike object, these objects, with their netted design (which in the mushroom would be the remnants of the universal veil that covered its button stage) and their stalk, appear much more like mushrooms than like pinecones. Might they be representations of the famed Amanita muscaria, the psychotropic mushroom that Gordon Wasson (1968) suggested was the god/plant Soma referred to in the Hindu Rig Veda (Figure 4.11)? Amanita is presently found in Spain and Portugal, often (coincidentally) in association with pine trees as well as other conifers. If eaten, it induces ecstasy and intoxication, frequently followed by nausea and vomiting (Lotina Benguria 1971: Plate 2). It does seem possible that these objects refer to Amanita. These objects also resemble less toxic mushrooms, however, including Phallus impudicus (Lotina Benguria 1971: Plate 60). For now, it is impossible to say anything further about what the so-called pinecones represented and what their possible relationship to shamanic practice in ancient Iberia might be. But I do want to revisit the possible shamanic imagery of the 128

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engraved plaques. Can the distribution of these “shamanic” plaques offer any further indication as to their meaning? If these plaques were markers of shamanism, we would not expect to find them isolated in one region: they would be dispersed over the area in which the plaques in general have been found. Indeed, this is the pattern of their distribution. Of the four plaques that have this “stringy” imagery on the reverse, one is from the Lisbon district, one from Évora, and two from Huelva. So this interpretation is plausible. Another intriguing aspect of these “shamanic” plaques is that they all are decorated with inverted triangles, with their apex facing downward toward the base, whereas the dominant motifs on the plaques as a whole are triangles with their apex pointing upward toward the top of the plaque. Structuralists note that inversions of visual imagery often signal an oppositional value or an inversion in status (for example, a dead person) (Schuster and Carpenter 1996:274). Might this inversion of the triangle motif on the “shamanic” plaques have signaled an “inverted” or liminal being: someone who could travel to the land of the dead or someone who prepared the body of the dead for the journey to the afterlife? Again we can only speculate, but this interpretation does have a great deal of internal consistency. What do we make, then, of the Biomorph Simple plaques? Although obviously related in their visual imagery to the Whiskered plaques, they do seem to be a distinctive class. The Biomorph Simple plaques are more often made of other materi-

f ig u r e 4 . 10. Poppy plants, with nearly ripe capsules. Photograph courtesy of Gernot Katzer (http://www.unigraz.at/~katzer/engl/Papa_som.html).

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f ig u r e 4 . 1 1 . Amanita muscaria. Photograph © Michael Wood (http://www.mykoweb.com).

als such as sandstone, whereas the Whiskered plaques are primarily made of slate. They are also significantly larger than the Whiskered plaques, averaging 16.96 cm in height, while the Biomorph Whiskered plaques average 13.82 cm in height. Indeed, the Biomorph Simple plaques are larger than most of the other plaque types and are less standardized in their visual imagery than the Whiskered plaques. As a class, they appear to be more realistic representations of barn owls, with zigzag/ feathers on the front and back and with a white/undecorated “chest” area in the front. Finally, the Biomorph Simple plaques are more restricted in their distribu-

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tion than the Whiskered plaques; they tend to be found only in eastern Portugal and western Spain. These spatial, formal, and material differences between the Biomorph Simple and the Whiskered plaques suggest that they worked in different ways. It is possible that the larger size of the Biomorph Simple plaques is a function of their raw material. That is, the coarser properties of sandstone, in contrast to slate, required a larger surface in order to produce a visible and clear image. But because the imagery is so different from that of the Whiskered plaques, this possibility seems unlikely. I suggest that their large size and fewer individualizing features may point to their use as objects meant to be seen at a greater distance and by more people than the Whiskered plaques and indeed most other plaque types. Perhaps as dead owls were nailed to the doors of houses to avert evil in Roman times, these plaques with owl imagery were hung or displayed in the tombs as apotropaic images in the Late Neolithic. Their more restricted distribution may indicate that this was a regional practice. To conclude this examination of the plaques’ owl imagery, I suggest that the barn owl’s behavioral qualities linking it to both death and regeneration made it an apt metaphor to be used in a variety of ways in the burial tombs of these complex farming communities. In a classic work, James Woodburn (1982) discussed the relationship between the economic system of groups and their mortuary practices. Specifically, he distinguished between immediate-return and delayedreturn societies. Immediate-return societies, in general, are oriented toward the present (rather than to the past or future) and generally include mobile hunting and gathering communities. These groups have a minimum investment in longlasting artifacts, long-enduring debts, or binding commitments to specific kin. In delayed-returned societies—namely, agricultural societies—death involves major social readjustments and the risk of conflict and disorder. Rituals and rules must be in place to assure that property and goods can be passed on to the appropriate successors and inheritors. It was during the Late Neolithic that a fully agricultural and largely sedentary lifestyle was established in Iberia. These plaques therefore date to a time in which the continuous regeneration of land and human relationships came to be critical. The barn owl—both promoter of agricultural productivity and swift executioner— might have served as a key metaphor structuring cultural behavior. Animals are indeed good to think.

t h e c l o t h e d pl aqu e s While the interpretation of the plaques as owls or shamans may be limited to a relatively small group of plaques, there is a unity to the geometric design in all the plaque types (as discussed in Chapter 1). Elizabeth Barber (personal communica-

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f ig u r e 4 . 1 2 . a and b, Rug plaques from Cueva de la Mora (Huelva, Spain).

tion, 2002) and other textile specialists have noted that all the motifs on these plaques are basic textile weaves, reproducible by card or tablet weaving or on a simple loom. As mentioned above, some of the beings represented in these plaques appear to be wearing poncho-like clothing (Frankowski 1920:26). The Strappy plaques are also suggestive of clothing or fabric hanging on a body. Furthermore, Rug plaques, with their decorated borders and similar designs on their two sides, seem to be close renderings of woven blankets or rugs (Cabré Aguiló 1944) (Figure 4.12a, b). Intriguingly, the two sides of these plaques, which usually are decorated with triangles, often seem to have one row of inverted triangles near the top. This inversion may reflect the appearance of a kind of weave or may have a symbolic meaning similar to the inverted triangles on the Biomorph Whiskered plaques. What we know about the textile industry in the Iberian Late Neolithic suggests that it was a thriving one. Artifacts associated with textile production, such as clay loom weights and spindle whorls, are regularly found in settlement contexts and more rarely in burials throughout this period (Almagro Gorbea 1973: Figs. 54, 55; Castro-Curel 1983–1984; Alfaro Giner 1984; Cardito Rollán 1996: Fig. 2). Many of the loom weights are decorated and incised with the same designs found on the plaques, such as zigzags and herringbone patterns, although undecorated loom weights are much more common than decorated ones (Cardito Rollán 1996:127). Sites with large assemblages of loom weights and/or spindle whorls include Vila Nova de São Pedro and Zambujal in Portugal and Tabernas in southeast Spain (Cardito Rollán 1996). The settlement of Pombal in the plaque heartland of the Alentejo has an impressively large assemblage of more than 150 loom weights (Boaventura 2001:48). No thorough study has been made of the weights and divisibility of these loom weights, but this would certainly be an important step in de-

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termining the nature of the looms and what fabrics were probably woven on them (Elizabeth Barber, personal communication, 2002). While relatively few textiles have been preserved, the use of esparto, linen, and wool has been demonstrated for the Late Neolithic and Copper Age of Iberia (Alfaro Giner 1984). In two Portuguese Late Neolithic burials, fragments of linen (including a fragment painted with horizontal bands) have been found covering metal axes (Viana et al. 1948; Formosinho et al. 1953–1954; António Monges Soares, personal communication, 2002). A textile is a handy way to convey messages (Wobst 1977; Weiner and Schneider 1989), “even with our mouths shut” (Barber 1994:163). Textiles can mark or announce information (such as a change in a person’s social status), be used as a mnemonic device, invoke magic, protect the wearer, or divine the future (Barber 1991:149). While Barber dismissed the use of clothing to mark the fashionableness of the wearer as too subtle a reading for ancient cloth, I suggest that this level of aesthetics should be included in an overall understanding of cloth. But cloth is also a powerful metaphor for the interconnectedness of human life and for the multiple “strands” of experience that make up a person’s existence. Given the potency of cloth in functional, social, economic, and symbolic realms, it is not surprising that textiles would be depicted or their weave patterns used as decorative motifs, particularly if the plaques signified or recorded important information about individuals or groups. Because textiles are perishable, the plaques would have been the best media to record information designed to communicate to people or immortal beings into the future. This, of course, does not discount the possibility that actual textiles were also used to mark the event of a death or that individuals were buried with their clothes or textiles.

t h e l i v e s of m e ta phor s The plaques are an intriguing class of artifacts for their agency and their ambiguity. They are also captivating as pieces of the relatively coherent and enduring visual culture puzzle of Iberian prehistoric art. Their imagery is found, for example, in the material culture of Early Neolithic Iberia. It also appears in other media—both portable and monumental—of the Late Neolithic. Finally, this imagery enjoyed an afterlife following the decline of plaque use during the Iberian Bronze Age. Whether or not the artists who produced this material culture for over 5,000 years were conscious of the history and antecedents of this imagery is, of course, impossible to know. But given the historical continuity and regional comparability involved, and indeed the reuse of numerous Early/Middle Neolithic burial sites in Iberia in later periods (including into the Bronze Age), it seems reasonable to suppose that at least some of these artists were conscious of the antiquity of the imag-

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ery they created. Whether this memory involved the direct invocation of ancestors or a vague sense of antiquity is unknown (Van Dyke and Alcock 2003). But whatever the degree of intentionality and agency involved, we can assume that the meaning of this imagery probably varied in different regions of Iberia and that it changed significantly over time. Even within a given period, numerous factors would have contributed to the intended meaning of that imagery, including its color, medium, and performative context. For example, a person waving a black and white checkered flag over a track at a Formula One car race signals the completion of that race, while a black and white checkerboard pattern painted on a stone table represents a surface on which to play checkers or chess. In contrast, a red and white checkerboard cloth placed on a table or on the ground signals a picnic or some other casual meal. Thus any interpretation of the continuities in the plaques’ imagery over time or their conceptual uniformities across different media, even within Iberia (Bécares Pérez 1990), must proceed with caution. During the Early and Middle Neolithic of Iberia there does not seem to be any use of eye or owl imagery in the material culture that has been preserved. Polished stone axes are a regular feature of archaeological sites, however, reflecting the importance of forest clearance and agriculture. We also have evidence for textile production and basketry, particularly from the arid caves of southeast Spain. At the cave site of Los Murciélagos (Albuñol, Granada, Spain), a number of esparto sandals and baskets were found (Alfaro Giner 1984: Lam. XLIII–LIII, LXIX– LXXIII). Some of the baskets were decorated with colored pigments of unknown origin; their designs include bands, checkerboard, and vertical zigzags. These have recently been dated to the end of the 6th/beginning of the 5th millennium BC (Cacho Quesada et al. 1996). Most interestingly, some ceramics from the Middle Neolithic site of Cova de l’Or in eastern Spain are decorated with what appear to be rugs or blankets (Figure 4.13) (for example, Martí Oliver 1977; Alfaro Giner 1984; Bernabeu Aubán 1989: Fig. II.8.3, Fig. II.14.2). Similar imagery in Early or Middle Neolithic ceramics where plaques have been found in southwestern Iberia has not been discovered, however (João Zilhão, personal communication, 2004). Nor was slate used regularly as a raw material, though slate beads were sometimes made in the Middle Neolithic (Pascual Benito 1998). Stone tools and textiles were therefore key industries in the Early and Middle Neolithic of Iberia and likely played an important role in structuring the social and symbolic lives of these communities. It would not be surprising if later groups appropriated the symbolic imagery of stone tools and textiles in order to index an ancestral earlier Neolithic past. Indeed, textiles are already depicted on Middle Neolithic ceramics, which suggests that textiles may already have begun their transformation into a symbol or metaphor by that time. During the period contemporary with the use of the engraved plaques (the Late Neolithic) many classes of material culture, both portable and monumental, display the same imagery as found on the plaques. Closest to the engraved plaques in 134

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f ig u r e 4 . 13 . Ceramic vessel from Cova de l’Or (Alicante, Spain).

context, material, and imagery are the slate bacula, large (20 cm or more) curved, engraved slate pieces (Figure 4.14a–d). Most of the same motifs found on the plaques are found on the bacula, such as herringbone patterns, vertical bands, triangles, chevrons, and zigzags. Only the checkerboard motif seems to be absent. Bacula are much less common than the plaques, with about fifty or so known to date. The bacula are always found in burials that have plaques. There are two principal types of bacula: those with only the triangle design and those with triangle and vertical band designs. When the bacula are mapped by their designs (Figure 4.15), we see that the bacula with the triangles tend to be found to the northeast, in the Portalegre region, while those with the triangle/ vertical band designs are most concentrated in the Évora region. Interestingly, the bimodal spatial distribution of the bacula is comparable to the distribution of the two major classes of plaques: the Classic, Transitional, and Unipartite plaques vs. the Biomorph, Strappy, and Hoe plaques. The overlap between these two distinct 135

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f ig u r e 4 . 1 4 . Slate bacula. a, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). b, Anta da Marquesa (Portalegre, Portugal). c, Antas (Évora, Portugal). d, Anta da Herdade dos Galvões (Évora, Portugal).

f ig u r e 4 . 15. Distribution of bacula by design. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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but related classes of material culture may indicate that the designs on the bacula (and the plaques) index some territorially linked aspects of social identity. Along with the thousands of stone axes from settlements and burials of the time, there are also representations of hafted axes, such as the limestone ritual adzes found on some sites in the Lisbon and Setúbal peninsulas (Lillios 1991:130) (Figure 4.16a), and objects that evoke the form of axes, such as the perforated “ritual axes” (Lillios et al. 2000) (Figure 4.16b). Like the plaques, these classes of artifacts are found exclusively in burials. The axelike form of the plaques is also echoed in large (2 m) engraved stelae found in western Iberia, which—like the plaques—regularly show multiple horizontal registers of triangle motifs (Bueno Ramírez 1992: Fig. 19) (Figure 4.17a, b). These types of stelae, while not common, tend to be found in northwestern Iberia— largely outside the range of the slate plaques. Because they are found in isolation from sites, they are difficult to date with certainty; Bueno Ramírez has placed them in the Late Neolithic. Interestingly, one of these stelae from the site of El Millarón (Cáceres, Spain) has an image depicting a fringed rug, evocative of the Cova de l’Or ceramics (Bueno Ramírez 1990: Fig. 16) (Figure 4.17c).

f ig u r e 4 . 16. a, Limestone hafted adze from S. Martinho de Sintra (Lisbon, Portugal); length: 17 cm. b, Perforated amphibolite “axe” from Obidos Lagoon (Leiria, Portugal); length: 28 cm. Photograph courtesy of Francisco Alves.

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f ig u r e 4 . 1 7. Engraved stelae from western Iberia. a, Sejos (Cantabria, Spain). b, Tabuyo del Monte (León, Spain). c, El Millarón (Cáceres, Spain).

f ig u r e 4 . 1 8. a, “Eyed” ceramic vessel from Monte de Outeiro (Beja, Portugal). b, Limestone idol from Folha das Barradas (Lisbon, Portugal).

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f ig u r e 4 . 19. Beaker vessel from Palmela (Setúbal, Portugal).

The ocularity of the plaques and the “owl” imagery are found on a number of other contemporary objects throughout southern Portugal and Spain. These objects include the Symbolkeramik or “eyed” ceramics as well as the engraved bone, horn, and limestone “eyed” idols (Bécares Pérez 1990; Pascual Benito 1998). Eyed ceramics are found in settlements such as São Lourenço (Vila Real, Portugal) (Cardoso 2002:278) and Los Millares (Almería, Spain) (Arribas and Molina 1987, in Chapman 1990:72) as well as burials such as Monte de Outeiro (Beja, Portugal) (Figure 4.18a). The engraved idols are primarily found in burials (Figure 4.18b). Finally, the geometric imagery of the plaques also occurs in other media during the Late Neolithic. In addition to the bacula, loom weights, and stelae mentioned above, geometric motifs such as triangles, chevrons, and zigzags are also found on ceramics, with their richest expression in the Bell Beaker ceramics dated to the terminal phase of plaque use (Harrison 1974:105) (Figure 4.19). All the motifs of the plaques occur in Iberian beakers. Some plaques have been found in association with Beakers, such as at the site of Pedra Branca (Ferreira et al. 1975). While no systematic design analysis of Iberian Beaker ceramics along the same formal lines as those on the Iberian plaques has been carried out, this would certainly be a productive research path. 139

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During the Bronze Age, after the plaques ceased to be used, the iconographic vocabulary of ancient Iberians changed in many ways. For example, ocular imagery disappeared, as did overt textile imagery. For the most part the production of stone axes was also discontinued and replaced by axes made of copper or arsenical copper. There were some continuities, however, as many of the geometric motifs found in the Beakers and plaques appear in ceramics, such as Penha ware (Cardoso 2002:270), and gold metallurgy (Jorge 1995:23, 47, 93). The spectacular gold diadems and lunulae of the Late Bronze Age, for example, were commonly decorated with incised triangles and zigzags.

disc ussion The engraved stone plaques were potent objects that appear to have referenced the ancestral past and the future of ancient Iberians. Whether the plaques were of the Classic type (with historically saturated textile and axe imagery) or of the Biomorph type (depicting liminal animals and/or beings), they bridged and transcended the past and the future. Each plaque was held in a “web of citation” (Shanks 2004:373). The scale and visual subtlety of the plaque, however, dictated that its potency could only be evoked in small-scale and intimate ritual performances, perhaps involving only religious specialists and close kin. Indeed, we could say that the plaques structured acts of privacy, reflection, and small-scale group solidarity. Although this analysis of the plaques as visual culture is inspired by Gell’s action-centered approach to art, which serves as an important corrective to a purely semiotic approach, I nonetheless find his rejection of the meaningfulness of art and visual imagery to be unsatisfactory and narrow. The plaques (and, I would suggest, all art) “act” because of their culturally specific symbolic or metaphorical content as well as their more universal perceptual or cognitive properties. Without an understanding of the historical and cultural context of their imagery—the owls, axes, and textiles—our apprehension of the plaques would be grossly incomplete and superficial. Art is able to do what it does, in part, by what it means. The full visual and, by extension, social and cultural potency of the plaques only emerges when their material properties are considered in their totality.

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five

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I

n this chapter I address perhaps the most intriguing quality of the Iberian plaques: the possibility that they—or at least the majority of them—were a form of writing. The identification and decipherment of ancient writing systems are contentious fields, entangled with the twin threads of power and identity. From a historical perspective, power and writing are inextricably linked. Scholars associate the development of writing with the emergence of political centralization, the control of people, property, and knowledge in large bureaucracies, and elite religious practices (Hooker 1990). The significance that scholars attach to literacy is itself a product of colonial and postcolonial engagements (Street and Besnier 1994). Power and authority also come into play when scholars debate definitions of writing. Whose definition of writing is considered authoritative? Must a writing system be glottographic and tied to speech (Gelb 1963; Ong 1982; Goody 1986, 1987; Coe 1992)? Should semasiography or permanent recording systems that are not “parasitic on language,” such as the Aztec pictorial codices and Inka khipu, be considered writing as well (Sampson 1985:26–28; Boone 1994; Salomon 2004)? Is the articulation between writing and speech overly restrictive and indeed flawed (Derrida 1976)? What are the implications—and what is at stake—if writing is identified in a prehistoric people? To put it another way: should the writing club be an exclusive one, with membership available only by invitation from its current members? Or should it be more inclusive, with flexible and contingent membership terms? I suggest that a more inclusive definition of writing enables us to analyze and compare the different properties and functions of the full range of materialized and codified strategies—or communication technologies (Houston 2004)—that human beings have developed over time to record information effectively. Most importantly, such a definition also avoids the reification of a Great Divide separating nonliterate/prehistoric peoples from literate/historic peoples (Goody 1977)—a distinction which has largely been rejected by linguistic anthropologists (Street and Besnier 1994). Thus Elizabeth Boone’s definition of writing as “the communication of relatively specific ideas in a conventional manner by means of permanent, visible marks” (Boone 1994:15) is used in the following discussion of the plaques. Let us examine the interpretive challenges that we face in proposing that the

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Iberian plaques were a system of writing. First, we have no documents informing us that Neolithic Iberians had a recording or writing system. In the case of the Inka khipu, for example, Spanish accounts as early as 1532 state that when Francisco Pizarro and his men removed goods from one of the Inka storehouses “the record keepers untied some of the knots which they had in the deposits section [of the khipu], and they [re-tied] them in another section [of the khipu]” (Urton 2003:3). Thus, even though the meaning of the khipu is vigorously disputed (Ascher and Ascher 1997; Quilter and Urton 2002; Urton 2003) and scholars debate whether they represent mnemonic systems or “true” glottographic writing, most agree that the khipu worked to record something, somehow. In Neolithic Iberia we have no such documentary evidence. We cannot assume a priori that the designs on the engraved plaques signified something. In addition to this historical challenge, any scholar studying and attempting to decode the Iberian plaques faces a set of imposing epistemological hurdles. Poststructural scholars, including archaeologists, have challenged the notion that signs or symbols have relatively fi xed meanings (Derrida 1976; Shanks and Tilley 1987a, 1987b). The relationships between signifier and signified, and thus meanings, are unstable. But, by denying the possibility of stabilizing any meaning for all signs, we deny the possibility of identifying and deciphering recording systems in the past. Unwittingly, such an epistemology contributes toward reifying the traditional notion of a Great Divide, by maintaining a distinction between “prehistoric” and “historic” peoples. This is an ironic twist indeed. We face another imposing question: if prehistorians had known about the Iberian engraved plaques since the nineteenth century, why did none of them seriously contemplate the possibility that they were a recording or writing system? The reasons, I would suggest, are as much paradigmatic as they are empirical. The paradigmatic barriers that prevented scholars of the nineteenth century from seeing the plaques as writing, while of a different nature than the barriers facing scholars today, were significant. As discussed in Chapter 1, prehistorians traditionally viewed ancient peoples of western Europe as outside the core “civilizing” sphere of the eastern Mediterranean, although periodic colonizations from the east were invoked to explain cultural innovations such as metallurgy and megalith-building. Western Europe in prehistory, after all, was part of the barbarian nonliterate world. The one scholar who suggested albeit indirectly that the plaques might be a writing system—the paleontologist Florentino Ameghino—was largely ignored. Ameghino was best known by his contemporaries for his controversial idea that all mammals, including humans, first evolved on the pampas of Argentina. Because the Iberian plaques were a minor component of his grand (and discredited) diff usionist scheme, his work went largely unnoticed by later European prehistorians. Scholars also might not have approached the plaques as writing because of the dispersed nature of the plaques’ publication. Without a comprehensive catalogue it was nearly impossible to discern patterns in their designs by tomb or over space. 142

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As students of the Iberian plaques we are fortunate in one important way, however. The best current estimates place the number of engraved plaques at about 4,000. In contrast, about 600 khipu are known (Urton 2003:2). The plaques’ abundance and the ESPRIT catalogue of over 1,300, or about 30 percent of the approximately 4,000 believed to exist, help to mitigate some of the handicaps we face. For, as Quilter (2002:xix) noted in his discussion of the khipu, “no code can be cracked, chipped at, or unravelled unless the material to be worked on is within easy reach of those who wish to solve the riddle.” Even when decoding does occur, as in the case of Maya writing, the “code was not so much broken—as it was chipped away at: a little hole was gradually made bigger until, eventually, a critical mass was reached and the wall of ignorance came tumbling down” (ibid.). My aim in this chapter is to begin that process of chipping away, first by considering whether the plaques are a semasiographic writing system and then by exploring some ways in which the plaques might be read.

e l e m e n ts for a w r i t i ng s y s t e m Let us examine in more detail the evidence we have (and do not have) for the components of a writing system, as defined by Boone. Her definition effectively has four elements: 1. writing employs visible marks; 2. writing is permanent; 3. writing involves the use of conventions; 4. writing is designed to be relatively specific about the ideas being communicated.

Each of these elements on its own is not sufficient to describe a writing system, but when found together they provide a compelling case for writing.

Writing Employs Visible Marks The engraved designs of the Iberian plaques were created to be viewed. In Chapter 3 I discuss the evidence for amendments and corrections of the plaques’ designs, indicating that someone noted their appearance and carried out or had someone else carry out these changes. Not all the marks and designs on the plaques, however, are equally visible. On some materials, such as the dark slates often used to make the Strappy plaques, the contrast between the incisions and the background is high, and the lines are quite clear from a distance. On light-colored slates, such as those used to make some of the plaques from Caeira 7, the incisions are not at all distinct; if they were meant to be seen, they needed to be viewed at close range. 143

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Another set of questions: who was meant to view the marks and who could read them? These two groups were not necessarily the same. The available evidence for the biographies of the plaques suggests that the majority were likely made close to the time of a person’s death or at least were not worn by a moving person, given the pristine condition of so many of the perforations. But whether the deceased ever saw the plaques they were buried with or whether only the producer did and whether the plaques were viewed by an exclusive group of people can never be known. There were certainly opportunities at the time of burial or in between internments for people (whether religious or memory specialists or close kin) to enter the tombs. The dead—and the plaques—may also have been publicly displayed prior to burial, which would have enhanced the viewing of the plaques at close range. In addition to the question of who was able to view the plaques, another question arises: who could read them? How variable might their readings have been? What interpretive communities (Fish 1980) might have existed during the Iberian Neolithic?

Writing Is Permanent Nothing is truly permanent. But the materials on which the plaques were made (slate and sometimes schist and sandstone) are all fairly durable. Certainly slate is known by contemporary builders as a durable construction material and is able to withstand high heat and significant temperature variations. It is also, of course, an eminently inscribable medium. As discussed in Chapter 4, this makes it an ideal raw material for the (relatively) permanent recording of visual imagery. The case for the plaques as writing, however, has less to do with the medium of slate being permanent and more, I would suggest, with it being alterable. One can make changes to an engraving on slate by adding lines or designs and can also “erase” by rubbing out designs. Slate is a forgiving medium.

Writing Uses Conventions The plaques’ formal conservatism and their engravers’ adherence to apparently strict conventions are some of the most compelling features of the plaques. The majority of plaques (that is, the Classic plaques) are highly standardized in their form and design, although each plaque is unique in its design combination and iteration, as discussed earlier. Despite their design standardization, however, the plaques also display an enormous range in their style of manufacture. Some suggest a master at work, while others appear to have been made by a novice or someone with a shaky hand. This stylistic variability in combination with their rigid compositional standardization strongly suggests that the plaques represent a system of conventions shared by many artisans over a wide area and over a long period, probably many hundreds of years. I would also argue that it is this iconographic standardization of primarily geometric forms that has prevented scholars from seeing the plaques as anything other than pure design. 144

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Writing Communicates Relatively Specific Ideas This criterion of writing integrates the function of a visual marking system (communication) with its content (specific ideas). These are certainly the most difficult qualities of the plaques to demonstrate. Before proceeding, I want to make clear that I do not think that all the plaques, or all plaque types, functioned in the same way or meant the same thing. Throughout this book I develop the thesis that any totalizing interpretation or proposed meaning of the plaques is flawed. After all, not all handwritten documents necessarily record the same kinds of information. Some might be the drafts of a novel, some might be love letters, some might be grocery lists, and some might be a child’s math homework. As discussed in Chapter 1, some plaques, such as the Classics, show highly insistent and standardized forms, whereas other types, such as the Biomorphs and Rugs, seem to have less insistent forms. The plaque types display different ranges of variation and different distributions, and I suggest that their meanings were similarly varied.

de c odi ng t h e pl aqu e s My chipping away to reveal the plaques’ communicative specificity begins with two features of the Classic plaques: the number of registers in the base and the design elements of the base. Given that the registers seem to have been very deliberately created—and were often amended—I argue that they were a key structuring feature of the plaques and that their production was a key organizing action. Furthermore, the base element designs for the plaques have distinctive geographic distributions (for example, limited for checkerboard and more widely distributed for triangles) and thus also appear to be significant. While the bacula are formally different from the plaques, their distribution by design elements (as discussed in Chapter 4) supports the likelihood that the plaques’ designs also mapped territorially linked social or political categories. Let us examine the patterns in register numbers and design that are found among plaques in a tomb and among plaques in different tombs. Within a tomb, the Classic plaques of a given motif regularly occur with other plaques that have the same number of registers or as part of a continuous sequence. For example, 17 of the 35 Classic checkerboard plaques that have their entire base preserved occur with other Classic plaques that have the same number of registers or with other Classic plaques that differ by one register (Figures 5.1, 5.2). The remaining plaques either are the sole checkerboard plaque at the site or, more rarely, are associated with plaques that differ by more than one register. For the Classic zigzag plaques (n = 61), 40 occur with other Classic zigzag plaques that have the same number of registers or with plaques that differ by one register (Figures 5.3, 5.4). For the Classic chevron plaques (n = 56), 29 occur with other Classic chevron plaques that have the same number of registers or differ by one register (Figures 5.5, 5.6). 145

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site/no. of registers (with number of plaques)

3

4

5

6

Alter do Chão

7

8

9

10 11 12 13 14

1

Alto do Poço Novo

1

Barcarrota

1

Brissos 1

1

Brissos 6

1

1

1

Cabeço

1

Caeira 7

1

Carvão

1

Cebolinho 1

1

Comenda da Igreja

1

Folha da Amendoeira

1

Olival da Pega 1

5

Olival da Pega 2

1

1

1

2

1

Olivenza

1

Passo 1

3

Sepulcro de Corredor de Valdecavado

1

2

Sobreira 2

1

Torre das Arcas

1

Vale de Rodrigo 1

1

Zambujeiro

1 f ig u r e 5. 1 . Classic checkerboard plaques by site and register number. Shaded sites with continuous or near-continuous “series.”

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f ig u r e 5.2 . Example of a tomb “series” of Classic checkerboard plaques from Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal).

In the case of the Classic triangle plaques (n = 220), 172 occur with other Classic triangle plaques that have the same number of registers or differ by one register (Figures 5.7, 5.8). Such clustering by numbers of registers would not seem to be an artifact of a random distribution. At some of the larger tombs, continuous sequences are found for many or all of these motifs. For example, Olival da Pega 1 and Comenda da Igreja, two of the largest megalithic sites in Portugal with some of the largest collections of plaques, have continuous sequences for all four motifs. Another interesting pattern emerges when the frequency of plaques is examined in relationship to their number of registers by motif (Figure 5.9). In all four motifs, the number of plaques increases as the register numbers increase, but this is then followed by a decrease. It may simply be progressively more difficult to draw more registers on a plaque. A larger piece of slate could have been selected, however, and indeed rather high numbers of registers (up to fourteen) were at times drawn. We find another salient pattern among the Classic plaques: as the plaques’ register numbers increase, they are found increasingly dispersed. In other words, plaques with low register numbers are found in a small cluster (in the Alentejo), and plaques with higher register numbers are found over a more dispersed area. Figures 5.10–5.13 show the distributions of the lowest numbered (by register) plaque at a site by mo-

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site/no. of registers (with number of plaques)

1

2

3

4

Alto do Poço Novo

5

7

8

1

Azinheira

1

Barcarrota Brissos 6

2

1

1

3

1

Brissos 6 (rays)

1

Caeira 7

2

Cebolinho 1

1

Comenda da Igreja

9

Comenda da Igreja (inverted Vs)

1

3

1

Cova da Moura

1

Escoural

1

Folha da Amendoeira

1

1

Furninha

1

Galvões

1

Herdade de Ordem 1

1

Horta Velha do Reguengo

1

Lapa do Bugio

1

1 1

Lapeira

1

Las Cabezas 2

1

Marquesa

1

Monte Velho

1

Montenegro

1

Olival da Pega 1

1

Passo 1

2

2 1

2

1

Pessilgais (“hairy ocular”)

1

Santa Margarida 3

1

S. Dionisio

1

Vale de Rodrigo 2 (“hairy ocular”) Zambujeiro

6

1 1

1

1

1

f ig u r e 5.3 . Classic zigzag plaques by site and register number. Shaded sites with continuous or near-continuous “series.”

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f ig u r e 5. 4 . Example of a tomb “series” of Classic zigzag plaques (with straps) from Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal).

tif. In the cases of the chevron, zigzag, and checkerboard plaques, there appears to be some spread outward from a core area in Évora. The strongest evidence for the dispersal of plaques by register number occurs in the case of the Classic triangle plaques. Those with the lowest number of registers (two) are almost all found in eastern Portugal and western Spain. Of the twenty-four Classic triangle plaques with two registers in ESPRIT, none come from the Lisbon area and only one from Setúbal (from the site of Lapa do Bugio). The regularity of these three patterns strongly suggests that the plaques record sequential and spatially correlated information (Lillios 2002, 2003). It seems reasonable to propose that the register numbers of the Classic plaques indexed genealogical information of diff erent lineages: specifically, the generational distance between the deceased associated with the plaque and a founding ancestor. A two-register triangle plaque would thus connote a person two generations removed from a founding ancestor. The continuity in sequences points to the continuous use of tombs over many generations. The increase in register numbers suggests gradual demic diff usion away from a core “ancestral” area over time. When discovered in association with a preserved skeleton, the plaques are found on its chest or side (Gonçalves 1999b:87), suggesting that the plaques were closely linked to the identity of the dead or at least some of the dead. Their context and 149

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a n i be r i a n w r i t i ng s y s t e m site/no. of registers (with number of plaques)

4

Aljezur

5

6

1

Azinheira

7

8

9

10 11 12

1 1

Brissos 6

2

1

Cabeço da Arruda

1

Camuge

1

Comenda 1

1

Comenda 2

1

Comenda da Igreja

3

Escoural

2

Escoural (inverted Vs)

2

2

2

1

1

Fonte da Senhora

1

Granja da Céspedes

1

Herdade da Costa 2

1

Herdade de Ordem 1

1

Herdade do Duque

1

1

1

1

La Pijotilla

1

1

La Pizarrilla

f ig u r e 5.5. Classic chevron plaques by site and register number. Shaded sites with continuous or near-continuous “series.”

association with the dead seem to preclude their use as records of landholdings or economic transactions, as early Mesopotamian tokens seem to have been used (Schmandt-Besserat 1997). The collective nature of burials in the Neolithic and the use of tombs over long periods lend further support to the hypothesis that the registers recorded genealogical information about the dead. The ethnographic literature contains many examples of using notations and positioning of object elements to record genealogies. Most cases involve societies with hereditary rank. These include the lukasa memory boards of the Luba of Democratic Republic of the Congo (Roberts and Roberts 1996), the wooden whaka-

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a n i be r i a n w r i t i ng s y s t e m site/no. of registers (with number of plaques)

4

5

6

Lameira

1

Lapa do Bugio

1

Lapeira

1

Los Mellizos

1

Marcella

1

Maxial

7

8

9 1

1

Monte Canelas

1

Monte das Pedras Olival da Pega 1

1 2

1

1

1

Olival da Pega 2

1

Palmela Passo 1

10 11 12

1 1

Pedra Branca

1

S. Paulo 2

1

Santa Margarida 1

1

Zambujeiro

2

Zambujeiro (fishnet)

1 f ig u r e 5.5. (continued )

papa or genealogy staffs of the New Zealand Maori, and other wooden staffs from Borneo, Myanmar, Sumatra, and Rarotonga. The vertical arrangement of anthropomorphic figures, notches, or knobs on these staffs was used to record ancestry as well as community organization or numbers of enemies killed by the deceased (Carpenter and Schuster 1988; Schuster and Carpenter 1996). I suggest that the Classic plaques might be broadly conceived as semasiographic systems or systems of “writing without words” (Gelb 1963; Boone and Mignolo 1994; Salomon 2001; Houston 2004). Despite their prevalence and complexity, as a class of recording systems semasiographic systems tend to exist in the intellectual

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f ig u r e 5.6. Example of a tomb “series” of Classic chevron plaques from La Pizarrilla (Badajoz, Spain).

shadows of the “real writing” practiced by the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and the Maya. Yet a number of recent studies of semasiographic systems among the Inka, the Zapotec, and the Aztec have begun to challenge traditional evolutionary models and classificatory systems in anthropological linguistics. For example, it is clear that semasiographic systems were efficient enough to manage the functioning of a state-level society, the khipu of the Inka being the classic example (Urton 2003). It is also true that semasiography does not seem to be linked to glottographic scripts, although semasiography can predate glottographic scripts and glottographic scripts and semasiographic systems can coexist. There is an overwhelming degree of internal consistency to this genealogical model. For example, if we use the stylistic indicators of individual engravers (discussed in Chapter 2) to reexamine those plaques that appear to have been produced by a common engraver, we note some very interesting patterns (Figures 3.21, 5.2, 5.4, 5.6, 5.8). Plaques produced by the same engraver (or that share a distinctive stylistic idiosyncrasy) have the same number of registers or diff er by one or two registers. Using the genealogical model, we would expect that, within a lifetime, an engraver would have been able to produce plaques for individuals of the same generation (with the same number of registers) or for those one or two generations removed. For example, two Classic chevron plaques with chevrons not divided by vertical lines are found in neighboring tombs (Comenda 1 and 2) and, more significantly, differ by one register number. A number of Classic triangle plaques with left- and right-leaning triangles have been found at Granja de Céspedes 152

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site/no. of registers (with number of plaques)

2

Alapraia

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10 11 12

1

Alcogulo 3

1

Aljezur

2

1

Aljezur (rays)

2

Aljezur (inverted Vs)

1

Alter do Chão

1

1

Azinheira

1

Barcarrota

1

Barrocal

1

Brissos 6

1

Brissos 6 (inverted Vs)

4

2

1

Brissos 6 (variant)

1

Cabeço

2

Cabeço da Arruda

2

Caeira 6

1

1 1

1

Carrajola

1

Carvalhal

1

Casa Branca 3

1

Casa da Moura (fishnet)

1

Casa da Moura

1

Casa Velha

1

Cavaleiros

1

Cebolinho 1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

Comenda 2

1

Comenda da Igreja

3

6

3

Comenda da Igreja (fishnet)

1

Corchero

1

Couto da Biscaia 1

3

2

1

1

1

1

f ig u r e 5.7. Classic triangle plaques by site and register number. Shaded sites with continuous or near-continuous “series.”

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site/no. of registers (with number of plaques)

2

Couto da Biscaia 1 (inverted Vs)

3

4

5

6

8

9

10 11 12

1

Cova da Moura

1

Cova da Moura (fishnet)

1

Cova da Moura (strap+fishnet)

1

Dolmen das Conchadas

2

Dolmen das Conchadas (rays)

1

Dolmen das Casainhos

1

1

1

1

Escoural

2

Escoural (inverted Vs)

2

4

1

1

2

Escoural (fishnet)

1

Fábrica de Celulose

1

Farisoa

1

Folha da Amendoeira

3

Fonte da Senhora

6

1

Força Velha

1

Furadouro da Rocha Forte

1

1

Furadouro da Rocha Forte (fishet)

1

Galinha

1

Galvões

2

Granja de Céspedes

2

2

2

Herdade de Ordem 1

2

1

Herdade de Ordem 1 (strap+fishnet)

1

1

Horta Velha do Reguengo

1

La Pizarrilla

1

Lameira

1

Lapa do Bugio

1

1

Lapa do Bugio (inverted Vs)

3

1

1

1

Lapa do Bugio (fishnet+straps)

1

Lapa do Bugio (fishnet) Las Cabezas

7

1 1

1

f ig u r e 5.7. (continued )

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site/no. of registers (with number of plaques)

2

Marcella

1

Marquesa

3

4

5

6

1

1

2

2

1

8

9

10 11 12

1

Matalote

1

Moita 1

1

1

Monte Canelas

1

Monte Redondo

1

Olival da Pega 1

7

3

Olival da Pega 1 (straps+variant)

1

Olival da Pega 2

1

Oliveira 1

1

Palmela

2

Palmela (fishnet)

1

Palmela 3

1

Palmela 4

1

Pardaleras

1

1

Passo 1

2

1

Pedra Branca

3

3

Pedra Branca (rays)

1

Pedra Branca (inverted Vs)

1

Pedrão

1

Prada de Lacara

1

Praia das Maçãs

1

Praia das Maçãs (rays)

1

1

2 1

Praia das Maçãs (variant)

1

Praia das Maçãs (fishnet)

1

1

Praia de S. Torpes

1

Santa Margarida 1

1

Santa Margarida 3

1

Santiago Maior (collar, rays) Santiago Maior

7

1 1 f ig u r e 5.7. (continued )

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a n i be r i a n w r i t i ng s y s t e m site/no. of registers (with number of plaques) S. Paulo 2

2

3

4

2

1

S. Pedro de Gafanhoeiro 2

6

7

8

9

10 11 12

1

Sepulcro de Corredor de Valdecavado

1

Sobreira 2

1

Tapadão da Relva

1

Vale de Rodrigo 1

1

Vale de Rodrigo 1 (inverted Vs)

1 1

Velada

1

Velada (straps, inverted Vs)

1

Velada (fishnet) Villar del Rey

5

1

1

1

1 1

Xarez 1

1

Anta Grande de Zambujeiro

1

1

f ig u r e 5.7. (continued )

(Figure 5.8d–j). The two Classic zigzag plaques with “hairy ocular” motifs in the top field (from Pessilgais and Vale de Rodrigo 2) both have four registers (Figure 5.3). If we take register numbers as a proxy for time (with two-register plaques predating those with three registers, e.g.) we might also expect to see the waxing and waning of other design elements if the principles of seriation have any validity. This is indeed what we find (Figures 5.1, 5.3, 5.5, 5.7). For example, in the top field of the Classic plaques with three of the four major design elements, inverted Vs occur on plaques with the lowest number of registers, while the rays and fishnet occur on those with higher register numbers. Straps (both vertical and horizontal), however, are common throughout the sequence. The checkerboards—the fourth Classic plaque type—have only straps and collars in the top field. Given that these plaques are the most geographically restricted type and are found only in the area where slate occurs, it seems reasonable to propose that these plaques represent some of the earliest Classic plaque types. The Classic vertical band and herringbone plaques are also restricted in distribution to the Alentejo and only have straps as their top element, suggesting that the Classic vertical band and herringbone plaques were also early and roughly con-

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temporary to the Classic checkerboards. In contrast, given their abundance, diversity, and vast geographic extent, the Classic triangle plaques seem to represent a later manifestation of the Classic plaques than the vertical band, herringbone, and checkerboard. Using both the proxy method of ordering the plaques (using register number as a proxy for time) and phyletic seriation (by top and base design) (O’Brien and

f ig u r e 5.8. Examples of tomb “series” of Classic triangle plaques. a–c, Brissos 6 (Évora, Portugal). d–j, Granja de Céspedes (Badajoz, Spain).

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f ig u r e 5.9. Percentage of plaques by base design and registers.

Lyman 1999), I propose a tentative chronological sequencing of the Classic plaques (Figure 5.14). The strength of this proposed sequence is that two independently derived methods generate the same sequence.

f u r t h e r i m pl ic at ions of a c l a ssic pl aqu e c ode The evidence related to the registers and base designs of the Classic plaques, which exhibits a high level of internal consistency, strongly suggests that the Classic plaques were genealogical markers. While this affirmation is hardly proof, the identification of their patterning brings us to a very different intellectual and epistemological space than simply viewing all the Iberian plaques as Mother Goddesses. We now have some solid hypotheses about the Classic plaques that can be tested, validated, or refined with absolute dates or genetic analyses of associated skeletal remains. If we take the Classic plaques as indices or emblems of lineage affiliation and genealogical relationships, how might we read their other features? I now want to consider how we might interpret their other design elements, such as their top designs, bands, and combination of base designs. Straps are by far the most common top design element on the Classic plaques (Figure 5.15). The number of left straps and the number of right straps on a plaque are nearly always the same (ranging from one to ten), and they can be either vertical

158

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f ig u r e 5. 10. Distribution of Classic chevron plaques.

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f ig u r e 5. 1 1 . Distribution of Classic zigzag plaques.

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f ig u r e 5. 1 2 . Distribution of Classic checkerboard plaques.

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f ig u r e 5. 13 . Distribution of Classic triangle plaques.

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seriation of classic plaques, by base design and top design base design

earliest

latest

Vertical Band Herringbone Checkerboard Zigzag Chevron Triangle top design Straps Collar Inverted Vs Rays Fishnet f ig u r e 5. 1 4 . Seriation of Classic plaques.

Top Design/s on Classic Plaques 70

% of Classic Plaques

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Straps

Straps + Fishnet collar

Collar Inverted Vs

Rays

Straps + other motifs

Misc.

Top Design/s f ig u r e 5. 15. Frequency of top designs on Classic plaques.

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(37 percent) or horizontal (63 percent). What might the number and directionality of the straps signify? Might the directionality index gender or another social category that was binary? If enough skeletal remains are ever found in good association with Classic plaques, it might be possible to test this hypothesis. Another common top design, most often found with straps, is the collar. The presence of a collar was strongly correlated with plaques having one or more bands (gamma = –.472). Classic plaques can have up to thirteen bands, although over 60 percent did not have any bands at all. Perhaps the presence and number of bands and a collar were markers of individuals of a special status. Interestingly, a significant inverse correlation was found between the presence of a perforation and the number of bands (Pearson correlation = –.222). Plaques with a higher number of bands were less likely to be found with a perforation. This assertion could be evaluated if archaeologists are attentive to the artifacts that are found with plaques with these features. So far we have only considered the simple Classic plaques, whose base is made up of just one design element. But there are also hybrid Classic plaques whose base designs are made up of two or more design elements. Of the Classic plaques whose top and base are well preserved, 81 percent are simple plaques and 19 percent are hybrids. The hybrids are clearly a relatively unusual plaque type. What might they signify? Do we find patterns in the design combinations or sequences of these Classic hybrids? There are a few suggestive patterns that certainly warrant further statistical investigation. First, not all designs combine with other designs (Figure 5.16). For example, checkerboard designs as part of a Classic hybrid are only found with triangle designs. Herringbones are only found with triangles. Vertical bands are only found with triangles and chevrons. Chevrons only occur with triangles and vertical bands. Zigzags—in contrast to all the other motifs—are never found in combination with another motif on a Classic plaque base. In other words, all Classic zigzag plaques are simple plaques. Zigzags (as discussed earlier) are the dominant motif on the biomorph plaques. This is an intriguing difference and certainly should focus our attention on those individuals associated with these plaques. Perhaps the zigzag design signified a highly endogamous lineage or a class of specialists or elites (shamans?). Examining these Classic hybrid plaques in more detail, it is also interesting to note that their base designs—when they include a vertical band—generally occur as components of a regular sequence (from top to bottom): chevron, triangle, vertical band. Might the sequence of designs on these plaques record something of a historical nature, such as the marriage of offspring into new lineages, denoted by the hybrid designs? This model certainly seems plausible and has parallels in European heraldry (Slater 2003:114–119). Finally, it seems worth noting that most hybrid plaques have collars. Again the presence of a collar seems to denote a distinctive quality of the person associated with that plaque.

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f ig u r e 5. 16. Hybrid plaques. a, Galvões (Évora, Portugal). b, Herdade da Ordem (Portalegre, Portugal). c, Pedra Branca (Setúbal, Portugal). d, Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal). e, Escoural (Évora, Portugal). f, Vale de Rodrigo 1 (Évora, Portugal). g, Azinheira (Évora, Portugal). h, Monte Velho (Beja, Portugal). i, Olival da Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal). j, Santa Margarida (Évora, Portugal); k, Anta Grande de Zambujeiro (Évora, Portugal).

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f i n a l c onsi de r at ions I now wish to discuss the remaining plaque types briefly and offer some possible readings of them, using the patterns observed in the Classic plaques. Most similar to the Classic plaques in form and distribution are the Transitional and Unipartite plaques, as discussed in Chapter 2. These are much rarer than the Classic plaques, however, and have only a subset of the design elements found on the Classic plaques (generally only zigzags, chevrons, and triangles). If we note the number of their registers, as in the Classic plaques, it is clear that the register numbers for the Transitional and Unipartite plaques are generally much higher than for the Classics. Two Transitional plaques have eighteen registers, while the highest number of registers for a Classic plaque is fourteen. It seems reasonable to propose that the Transitional and Unipartite plaques may also have functioned as genealogical records but at a time (in later generations) when much of the information encoded in the Classic plaques ceased to be relevant for people. If this model is correct, the Transitional and Unipartite plaques should postdate the Classic plaques. Again, this hypothesis could be tested with good contextual information from an excavation. The Strappy plaques are relatively uncommon but bear a very high level of standardization. These plaques have between zero and three registers of triangles. When the plaques are analyzed spatially by their number of registers, they appear to disperse from a core area in Portalegre (where plaques have zero and one register) outward to the south and east (where plaques have one, two, and three registers) (Figure 5.17). Might we also be looking at a dispersal of a lineage, as with the Classic plaques? It certainly seems possible that the Strappy plaques also marked genealogical information in relation to the dead. The Hoe plaques, as described earlier, all have triangles as motifs. When they are plotted by register number, a rough east-west pattern is displayed (Figure 5.18). Though the evidence is less compelling, it seems possible that these also marked some genealogical histories. The Rug plaques are a diverse group distributed rather widely in the outermost zones of the plaques’ distribution. Given this centrifugal pattern, which is quite different from the patterns observed for the preceding plaques, I would argue that the mechanisms of their exchange (and probably their function and meanings) were quite different. There is the curious use of one register of inverted triangles on these plaques, usually on one side of the plaque (see Chapter 4). This inversion may index inverted social categories (such as the dead) or may have been an emblem of certain special individuals associated with the dead. Last but not least are the Biomorphs, the plaques that have seduced the minds and imagination of so many archaeologists for so long. As already noted, these plaques are rare and are generally found in the eastern and northern zones of the plaques’ distribution. Tombs generally have only one biomorph plaque. The de-

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2 3

1 0, 1 1

0?

2 0

2

f ig u r e 5. 1 7. Distribution of Strappy plaques by registers. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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8

4

10

3 3 4 10

unmarked sites with fragmentary plaques

f ig u r e 5. 1 8. Distribution of Hoe plaques by registers. Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

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signs used on the biomorph plaques are also rather distinctive. The Biomorph Simple plaques tend to be associated with zigzags and chevrons, while the Biomorph Whiskered plaques are found with triangles. The Biomorph Simple plaques display a high level of stylistic variability, suggestive of many producers, while the Biomorph Whiskered plaques are much more similar stylistically, suggesting a few engravers. I have already discussed the view that the Biomorphs may have referenced the barn owl or hybrid beings/humans evoking the properties of a barn owl, such as shamans. The barn owl’s dual association with death and with regeneration/fertility would have made it an apt image in the burial tombs of Neolithic farming communities. Because these plaques lack the distinctive individualizing qualities of the Classic plaques, they may have marked a specialized group of individuals who embodied the powers that transcended life and death or who articulated the land of the living with the land of the dead (Helms 2000), such as shamans, caretakers of the tombs, or individuals involved in preparing the bodies of the dead for burial.

c onc lu di ng t hough ts It is tempting to take this analysis to another level of interpretation and to begin reconstructing population and lineage movements across the landscape of southern Iberia during the Late Neolithic. We might propose a core development of a materialized lineage system in the Alentejo, with dispersal particularly toward the west along the Tagus River. We might suggest that the dolmens of the Lisbon area were established by immigrants coming from the Alentejo who wished to evoke their ancestral burial structures in the new landscape in which they found themselves. For now, however, this narrative must remain at the speculative level, although the development of independent tests of the plaques’ chronology and analyses of their associated human remains may begin to tell this story with some of the detail that historians have been able to achieve using documentary sources. To paraphrase Eric Wolf (1997), some of Europe’s own “people without history” may someday have histories of their own. In the final chapter I consider the broader implications of the genealogical model and contextualize the plaques within the social and political landscape of ancient Iberia.

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si x

m e mor y a n d i de n t i t y i n n e ol i t h ic i be r i a

D

uring the Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula, human groups engaged in mnemonic practices that centered on funerary rituals performed at collective burial monuments. At these stages for the performance of ritual (Barrett 1994) Neolithic peoples orchestrated their memories by manipulating objects, such as the engraved plaques, architecture, bodies, animals, and fire. The death of a person set in motion a series of decisions, negotiations, and rituals, which included the preparation of the body, the determination of the appropriate monument for burial, the selection of objects to be buried with the dead, and feasting. Some bodies went through further processing, such as defleshing, secondary burial, sorting of skeletal elements, and burning. Throughout these rites, specialists or kin engaged with the dead in lengthy and intimate ways, provoking new memories, new acts of forgetting, and ultimately new identities. The burial monuments themselves also had complex biographies. Burial structures were sometimes annexed, and elements of earlier monuments such as menhirs were sometimes incorporated. These mnemonic practices, in addition to having therapeutic properties, could also be used politically to create new pasts in accordance with changing visions of the present and future. The long histories of bodies, objects, and monuments of the Iberian Neolithic shaped the actions, beliefs, and identities of individuals and groups for hundreds of years (and continue to do so to this day). These mnemonic practices emerged at a time of profound change in the social and economic lives of Neolithic peoples. Broadly speaking, subsistence practices shifted from immediate-return to delayed-return economies. James Woodburn (1982) and Claude Meillassoux (1973) developed these concepts through their ethnographic fieldwork in Africa. As human groups increasingly rely on plant and animal domesticates and become less mobile, they are increasingly oriented to the future in order to manage these delayed-return economies. To ensure the successful continuation of this new mode of production, they become concerned with materializing and legitimating their ancestors, descent groups, and genealogies in enduring forms. This model has guided many studies of the European Neolithic and even later periods such as the Iron Age (Chapman 1981; Tilley 1996; Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998; Edmonds 1999; Arnold and Murray 2002; Bradley 2002).

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Recently, however, James Whitley (2002) critiqued this “obsession with ancestors” (see also responses in Pitts 2003 and Whitley 2003). Indeed the ancestor “problem” is part of a broader debate in anthropology on the universality (or not) of ancestor worship (Steadman et al. 1996). I take the view that all cultural groups have an interest in their origins, though not all individuals in these groups might share that interest. But the ways in which ancestry and origins are defined, constructed, and materialized vary greatly and change over time. Indeed, I have argued in previous work (Lillios 1999) that the archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggests that material mnemonics become particularly important symbolic capital to manage production and reproduction during periods of crisis or profound social change. The engraved plaques are a clear manifestation of such stabilized memories. This final chapter outlines the range of mnemonic practices evident in the archaeological record of the Iberian Neolithic.

m n e mon ic pr ac t ic e s i n n e ol i t h ic i be r i a Reuse/Transformation of Burial Monuments Menhir fragments were incorporated into later megalithic tombs, and annexes were built onto megalithic tombs (see Chapter 1). In addition to these architectural transformations, we have a compelling case for the appropriation of “deep time” (Boric 2003) at the site complex of Escoural in Portugal (Araújo and Lejeune 1995; Silva and Araújo 1995). Although situated in a granitic landscape, Escoural is a limestone cave formed by unusual metamorphic and crystallization processes. Its long history is likely due at least in part to its role as an unusual feature in the landscape (Bradley 2000). Within the thirty chambers of the cave are remains of human use spanning nearly fifty thousand years, with the earliest levels dating to the Middle Paleolithic. During the Upper Paleolithic human groups painted and engraved the interior of the cave with bovids and horses. In the early Neolithic people buried some of their dead in the cave. In the later Neolithic the cave was sealed, a large tholos was constructed some 600 m outside the cave, and a fortified settlement was established on the hillock immediately over the cave. No later Neolithic materials have been found inside the cave. How might we interpret this sequence of behaviors at Escoural? Some scholars have argued that “foreign” colonizers established the later Neolithic settlement on the cave site in an act of symbolic desecration and violent forgetting (Gomes et al. 1983–1984). Such an interpretation may, however, be reflective of contemporary sensibilities about the treatment of the past and the dead. We avoid building over cemeteries and stepping on graves. We also know all too well about the establishment of Christian altars, shrines, and churches over indigenous monuments and shrines, often in flagrant and violent acts of cultural erasure associated with 171

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colonialism. In the case of the later Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula, however, we have no evidence for large-scale colonization. We might therefore consider an alternate interpretation. If great power was derived from this space, we could also imagine there was a conscious desire to appropriate the power of such an anomalous, ancient, and possibly dangerous spot for the living. This seems consistent with another important fact. The tholos of Escoural has the largest number of slate plaques found anywhere in the Iberian Peninsula, with 167 (Santos and Ferreira 1969). Perhaps late Neolithic people believed that this massive cave, this odd feature in the landscape, was an axis mundi (Eliade 1954), a place of orientation and communication between the land of the dead and the land of the living, as caves so often are (Brady and Prufer 2005). Perhaps its force was so great that they sealed the cave to harness its power and protect themselves from it, securing the power that they may have derived from it.

Curation Objects, like architectural features, were also curated during the Iberian Neolithic. As discussed in Chapter 3, a number of the plaques were curated and recycled. Over thirty recycled plaques have been found in tombs; they occur as plaque fragments that were repolished on their broken edge, reperforated, or reengraved on their obverse side. Plaque recycling may represent curio collecting, a fairly innocent reuse of an object that caught a visitor’s eye. Given the monumentality of megalithic spaces and the density of objects and human remains, however, this innocent explanation seems unlikely for most recycled plaques. Rather, these cases suggest the appropriation of and/or the resistance to the power of an individual formerly associated with a plaque. Thus they may speak to acts that transformed an inalienable possession to an alienable possession: “defeats of hierarchy” (Weiner 1992; Mills 2004). Although tombs were regularly revisited, these recycled plaques are relatively rare, which may also speak to the perceived potency of the objects. Cranial discs (rounded pieces of human cranial bones) are also likely to have been curated or circulated. Found with these amulets were trepanned human skulls, the possible sources of these amulets. Trepanation was regularly practiced among Neolithic peoples of the Iberian Peninsula. Cranial discs were found at Lapa do Bugio (Cardoso 1992: Plate 18, no. 7) and Olival da Pega 1 and 2 (Gonçalves 1999a:73, 96). Trepanned skulls have been recovered in a number of Iberian Neolithic burial contexts, including Casa da Moura, Furninha (Delgado 1880; Cardoso 2002:218), and Pedrinha (Gama and Cunha 2003) in Portugal and Ciempozuelos (Liesau von Lettow-Vorbeck and Pastor Abascal 2003) and Cueva de la Mora (Guijo Mauri et al. 2000) in Spain. The deposition of cranial discs in burials suggests that trepanning was not always a clinical practice but may have been associated with the production of ancestral relics (Piggott 1940; Arnott et al. 2003). Direct dating of the discs as well as their associated skulls (both trepanned and not) would determine whether these were curated objects or heirlooms. The 172

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mobility of human skeletal remains in the Iberian Neolithic attests to the potency of the human body and particularly the skull. This practice is consistent with the grouping of skulls in mortuary contexts, as discussed in Chapter 1 for Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon).

Mimesis A host of objects and features of the Iberian Neolithic appear to cite or reference imagery from the natural or cultural landscape in new media. Indeed, some of these behaviors challenge the notion of universal boundaries separating the natural and the cultural. They also point to the agency and apotropaic qualities of the material world and art (Gell 1998; Boric 2003). These cases are perhaps the most difficult to demonstrate, because the level of intentionality and degree to which the behavior was conscious can always be disputed. Three categories of such behavior can be posited for the Neolithic of Iberia: architecture referencing landscapes, architecture copying earlier architecture, and material culture evoking other material culture in new media (media transfer or skeuomorphism). The regular orientation of megalithic structures can be viewed as a kind of mnemonic referencing. Bradley noted that early Neolithic houses of central Europe were regularly oriented to the east. Not finding a good functional reason for such an orientation, he suggested that these early farming peoples built their houses oriented to their place of origins (Bradley 2001). Similarly, throughout the Neolithic of the west Mediterranean (including the Iberian Peninsula) megaliths have been shown to be regularly oriented to the east, at approximately the axis of the midwinter sunrise (Hoskin 2001). Megalithic tombs on the Balearic Islands tend to face the west. Bradley’s model of ancestral origins seems to find some support in the anomalous data for the Balearics, because people probably populated the islands from the Iberian mainland to the west. A second class of mnemonic behaviors is suggested by architectural mimesis. Bradley and others propose that the later Neolithic long mounds and enclosures of central and western Europe imitate the form of and sometimes were even built over early Neolithic long houses (Bradley 1998, 2002). Later Neolithic populations in Portugal constructed megalithic burials (dolmens) using the locally available stone—limestone (Leisner 1965)—with the same architectonic plan as the Alentejo megaliths (Boaventura 2005). What is intriguing about this practice of dolmen construction in the Lisbon peninsula is that there were ample “natural” spaces where it would have been easier to bury the dead, such as caves and rockshelters, and indeed these were sometimes used. Might immigrants from the Alentejo have built these dolmens to reproduce their ancestral architecture? We might also imagine that nouveau-elites of the Lisbon area built these tombs in a strategy to appropriate the status of an “exotic” and “archaic” architectural style. Media transfer or skeuomorphism is a third form of mnemonic behavior. In Chapter 4 I discuss the formal similarities between the engraved plaques and pol173

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ished stone axes. They are roughly the same color (both dark gray/black), the same size (that of a human hand), and the same shape (trapezoidal or rectangular). Polished stone tools predate the use of slate plaques but continued to be used at the same time as the plaques. Their raw materials (amphibolite and slate) are sourced to the same region, the Alentejo of Portugal. Experimental studies have shown that the technology and physical actions required to make a slate plaque are nearly identical to those involved in manufacturing a polished stone tool, although making an engraved plaque takes far less time. I suggest that the plaques referenced axes, which were potent visual metaphors for these Neolithic peoples as they were throughout Western Europe (Edmonds 1995; Tilley 1999; Skeates 2002). A slate plaque in the form of an axe may have been the ideal symbolic palette for creating enduring memories in ancient Iberia.

Inscriptive Recording While the recording of genealogies, histories, myths, and other narratives in materialized forms undoubtedly involves the highest level of intentionality, it is also nevertheless difficult to prove and even more challenging to ascribe meaning to these cases (Houston 2004). The application of semiotics, the investigation of chaînes opératoires, and the analysis of sketches, drafts, corrections, and errors in a large data set can provide some guidance. In ancient times the manufacture of such records probably involved a small set of individuals, and their audience was likely restricted to an elite class of religious specialists, members of a sodality, or another elite group. The scale of these objects might be small and intimate or might be public, as in the case of stelae. Some scholars have suggested that the common motifs found on the plaques as well as stelae and portable objects such as limestone idols point to the existence of a megalithic “code” during the Neolithic of Iberia (Bueno Ramírez and Balbín Behrmann 1998). While some relatively fi xed set of meanings may indeed have been involved in such objects, we are on more solid methodological ground when we focus on a discrete set of objects within a particular region. The engraved plaques, as I suggest in this book, are the most compelling examples of inscriptive practices in the Iberian Neolithic. Specifically, the number of design registers on the Classic plaques may have recorded the number of generations that separated the deceased from a founding ancestor. Thus a person buried with a four-registered triangle plaque was four generations removed from an important founding ancestor of the clan. Clearly, this model is a first approximation of what was likely a more complex recording system, which I hope will be refined and tested with DNA studies. The plaques tend to be found in passage graves or other open graves, which were revisited. Whatever their precise meaning, they were probably meant to be viewed and consulted by later peoples for important decisions, such as who had the right to be buried in the tomb.

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m i n ds on t h e mov e : m e mor y a n d i de n t i t y i n t h e i be r i a n n e ol i t h ic Late Neolithic Iberians enacted these new mnemonic practices at precisely the same historical moment when they were involved in and experiencing complex transformations of their social, physical, and cognitive world. These transformations revolved around what might be seen as divergent behaviors and experiences of human populations at the time. On the one hand, we have evidence for increasing sedentism and the tethering of populations in monumental settlement constructions, such as at Zambujal and Vila Nova de São Pedro, with their house structures, specialized craft areas, and multiple phases of rebuilding. On the other hand, there are also clear signs that mobility at different scales and at least among certain individuals was quite high. Abundant exotic goods in both settlements and burials (such as amphibolite tools, flint blades, marine shells, and slate plaques) indicate that some individuals traveled regularly and far, over 100 km, in a system best characterized as logistical mobility (Binford 1980; Kelly 1995). Furthermore, burials were often located some distance away from settlement spaces; thus people would also have had to travel to transport the dead to their final resting place. The stones used to build megalithic tombs were often brought some distance, sometimes from kilometers away. Indeed, Late Neolithic peoples continued to practice many of the same subsistence activities of the Early Neolithic requiring mobility, such as pastoralism, gathering, hunting, and fishing. Much of this mobility was centered in the Alentejo, where durable stones, burial monuments, copper ores, light and fertile soils, and ample pasture were to be found. The relative importance or degree of sedentism and mobility cannot be ascertained at present, and no doubt these strategies shifted over time as a result of changing demographics, social tensions, and economic practices. But the different sets of experiences, knowledge, and access to goods and foods that travelers and traders would have enjoyed probably would have given them a special status. Sometimes such travelers are considered liminal or dangerous peoples; sometimes they are held in awe. But in general they are always considered to be different (Helms 1988). The ability to travel itself would have been the product of an individual’s social standing or particular skills. Most ethnographic studies of mobility in agricultural communities illustrate that gender, age, personal qualities, and skills influence the mobility patterns of individuals (Brettell 1986). While most long-distance travel known ethnographically is generally undertaken by males and archaeologists generally presume that such travel was carried out by males in the ancient past, Helms (1988:86) noted that the ethnographic record suggests that in travel which might have involved “treachery, dispute, or other danger, women, small boys, or socially irrelevant persons were sent as messengers.” My point is not to suggest who might have traveled on long-distance journeys in ancient Iberia but to highlight the fact that gender (Boaventura n.d.) and social

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status structured who would have been able to go on different kinds of journeys and that their experiences as travelers would have further enhanced their alterity. This polarization of social identity (although I do not mean to suggest that only two categories of being were created in this process) seems to be reflected in the material record of southwest Iberia at this time, with its proliferation of new objects such as decorated ceramics, stone, copper, bone, and of course the engraved plaques. Indeed, it is interesting to note that the creation of the engraved slate plaques began in the same region where not only slate but a range of other materials that were highly valued at the time (such as copper, variscite, and amphibolite) were found. The open plains of the Alentejo would have been a focal landscape through which travelers and traders from diverse reaches of the peninsula encountered each other, perhaps speaking different or mutually unintelligible dialects. Tensions and competition over access to the valued resources of the Alentejo could have stimulated the creation and materialization of social identities, giving rise to the production of enduring emblems of these identities in the form of the engraved slate plaques. In this discussion of the evidence for mnemonic practices and the implications of mobility during the Late Neolithic of the Iberian Southwest there is an irony. Despite our rejection of the colonialist model for the development of social formations and a quest for local origins for the social evolution of the Iberian Peninsula, we find ourselves forced to consider once again the prehistoric Other of these ancient peoples. This Other, however, was not a colonist from the Near East or the Aegean, as the Sirets or V. G. Childe might have argued. Rather, for the Late Neolithic travelers and traders of the Iberian Peninsula, those Others could have been the people living on the other side of the Tagus, coastal fisherfolk, or even their neighbors in the adjacent valley. Indeed, for those who stayed behind, the Others may also have been the travelers themselves.

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i n t roduc t ion 1. Although this book challenges the false dichotomy made by anthropologists and archaeologists between prehistoric and historic peoples and cultures, I nevertheless refer to nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars of antiquity as “prehistorians,” because that is what they were called and what they called themselves at that time. 2. I use the term “Late Neolithic” in this book to include what is known in the literature as the Late Neolithic (3500–3000 BC) and the Copper Age or Chalcolithic (3000–2000 BC). Because there is a great deal of continuity between the late fourth and third millennia BC (the Late Neolithic and the Copper Age) in the occupations of settlements, the use of burial tombs (Cardoso 1997; Chapman 1990:59–69), and material culture (stone tool technologies dominate throughout this period), I suggest that viewing the Late Neolithic in this way is more productive than breaking it up into phases characterized by different pottery designs. Not all my Iberianist colleagues would agree with me, however. 3. “Amuletos ou insignias ou emblemas ou objectos de culto.” 4. “Un système complet d’écriture idéographique, attendent encore leur déchiffrement et cachent certainement des faits d’une grande importance.” 5. “Muito simplesmente o que elas são—idolos, icones de divindades preistoricas.” 6. The term “heraldry” is generally applied to European medieval designs that signified the identity and lineage of a knight. European heraldry emerged from a military context as a way for knights to identify each other in battle while wearing their suits of armor (Slater 2003). I use the term “heraldry” in a more generalized and inclusive way to denote the regularized use of design elements to reference the identity and lineage of an individual in relation to other individuals or groups (though it is unclear how broadly understood this system of communication was throughout Neolithic society).

ch apter 1 1. Portions of this chapter are adapted and expanded versions of a previously published work (Lillios 2008). 2. “La terre promise des préhistoriens.” 3. The historian Estevão Lis Velho from Setúbal can be credited with producing the first drawing of a plaque in 1746. This plaque was found over a century earlier (1591) in a burial at

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no t e s to page s 21– 31 the beach of S. Torpes (Silva and Soares 1981:23). Lis Velho noted it as an “engraved black stone [pedra preta debuxada].” 4. “Amuletos ou insignias ou emblemas ou objectos de culto.” 5. “São desfavoraveis as condições de Portugal, n’este ponto, relativamente aos outros povos cultos. Do abatimento em que estamos só poderia erguer-nos a iniciativa dos governos alliada á dedicação de todos aquelles a quem não são indifferentes o progresso da sciencia e o passado e o futuro da humanidade.” 6. “Occasião opportuna . . . de contribuir para o commum progresso de Hespanha e de Portugal.” 7. “Encontramos estos signos completamente iguales a los que presentan algunas placas de esquisto de Portugal que nos ha enseñado el distinguido geólogo portugués don Carlos Ribeiro.” 8. “Un système complet d’écriture idéographique, attendent encore leur déchiffrement et cachent certainement des faits d’une grande importance.” 9. “Main sure et habile.” 10. “É este o unico paiz da Europa, que tem por emquanto manifestado placas de schisto ardosiano com gravura ornamental.” 11. “A sciencia exige a exhibição de provas directas.” 12. “Julgo haver suficiente fundamento para se dever entender, que as placas de schisto ardosiano e a sua gravura ornamental tiveram origem n’este augusto tracto de terra, que ha sete seculos se chama Portugal, onde actualmente a arte, padecendo uma dyspepsia desprezada, vae lentamente caminhando, quasi inanimada e decrepita, no rumo de todas as decadencias em busca de um epitaphio.” 13. More recently the Spanish archaeologist J. M. Gómez-Tabanera (1994) has proposed a relationship between the Egyptian ushabti and the Iberian plaques. 14. “Devemos ter sempre na memoria que estamos deante de povos que se encontravão em grau muito inferior de civilização: que se servirão de instrumentos de pedra . . . que não possuião a arte de escrever, que no desenho, ora não ião alem de linear . . . Homens assim não se elevão ás altas concepções philosophicas.” 15. “Se as placas são originarias do país, ou se o seu uso veio de fóra, é o que por ora não póde saber-se.” 16. “Se eu a encontrasse em Portugal, não a distinguiria das nossas!” 17. “De curieuses plaques de schiste gravées.” 18. “Art plus savant.” 19. “Se atendermos ao grande desenvolvimento que os estudos preistóricos vão alcançando em Espanha, região arqueologica de diretas e intimas ligações com o nosso país, não poderemos deixas de ir publicando todos os documentos interesantes que apareçam, e que concorram para um mais completo e rapido conhecimento da preistória da peninsula iberica.” 20. “Muito simplesmente o que elas são—idolos, icones de divindades preistoricas.” 21. “Manifestación palpable de la decadencia del Arte después del prodigioso desenvolvimiento de fines del Cuaternario.” 22. “Interesantísimos documentos de la Prehistoria.” 23. “Constituem uma manifestação artística, demonstrando, por vezes, mesmo elevado grau de perfeição e firmeza de mão do artífice gravador.” 24. “Son de gran originalidad y riqueza de inspiración decorativa, constituyendo especialmente un ídolo típicamente ibérica, con personalidad propia.”

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no t e s to page s 32 –126 25. “Termos ambíguos,” “carregados de imaginação fértil ou de analogias exageradamente fáceis.” 26. “Falta de apoio que nos deram os museus mais importantes a nível do país e quem contêm um número difícil de calcular de placas de xisto provenientes de antas portuguesas.” 27. “Pessoalmente, não hesito em aceitar que se trata de uma figuração de uma (ou mais) divindade(s) feminina(s), mais concretamente de uma ‘Deusa Mãe,’ por razões que se me afiguram de força indiscutível.”

ch apter 2 1. One of my graduate students at the University of Iowa, Jonathan T. Thomas, has recently carried out replicative experiments with engraved slate plaques in order to determine which stylistic features are most idiosyncratic of engravers and which of these features might be used to group plaques produced by an author (Thomas and Lillios 2007; Thomas et al. in press). Such research would contribute to our understanding of the plaques’ mode (or modes) of production and the organization of craft production in Neolithic Iberia.

ch apter 3 1. This chapter draws significantly from text found in Woods and Lillios 2006. “I” refers to Lillios; “we” refers to Lillios and Woods.

ch apter 4 1. For more on the attention theory of value, see the work of Michael Goldhaber (1997). 2. While cognitive psychologists might argue that such a distinction is too simplistic, as meaning and perception are mutually constitutive (Goldstone 2003), the terms are heuristically useful for our purposes. 3. Cross-culturally, it is well established that colors can be a potent metaphor and a signifier of cultural values, although their classification is variable (Berlin and Kay 1969; Hardin and Maffi 1997; MacLaury 1997). Despite the clear significance of color (and of related qualities such as brightness and hue) among human beings, archaeologists have only recently begun to explore the significance of color in ancient material culture (Jones and MacGregor 2002). 4. My discussion of the zoomorphic qualities of the biomorphic plaques is drawn from my paper presented at the Fourth Iberian Archaeological Congress in Faro in 2004 and published in Lillios 2006. 5. “Supõe o povo que ela mora nas torres e telhados das igrejas, para roubar e beber o azeite das lâmpadas . . . Se, pousando sobre o telhado de uma casa, deixa ouvir o seu grito rouquenho ou o sopro seguido, que se assemelha ao ressonar duma pessoa com a boca aberta, entende o povo que ela chama alguém à sepultura; e com a ideia da noite e vizinhanças dos cemitérios, olha a coruja como ave fúnebre e mensageira da morte, declarando-lhe a guerra mais atroz . . . O povo teme principalmente os gritos da coruja quando há um doente numa casa.”

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no t e s to page s 132 –170 6. I have borrowed the description of the plaques as “poncho-like” from Houston 2004:227. 7. The Alentejo is presently renowned as a production center for the weaving of woolen rugs and other textiles (Medeiros et al. 2000:182). 8. For an in-depth study of the Beaker ceramics from Zambujal, see Kunst 1987.

ch apter 5 1. I am indebted to Javier Urcid for suggesting this possibility to me. 2. I am very grateful for the assistance of my University of Iowa colleague Michael Chibnik and graduate student Erica Begun, for their help in coding and statistically analyzing the formal features of the Classic plaques. 3. Using this same logic, it would be reasonable to propose that curvy-strapped plaques predate plaques with straight straps. Highly curved plaques are only found in Évora and Portalegre (where slate is local), while straight-strapped plaques are found wherever Classic plaques are found. 4. This correlation is found only with hybrids that combine different design elements and not variations on the same design (such as lying chevrons and regular chevrons, inverted triangles and regular triangles, hollowed triangles and regular triangles, etc.). 5. Recently, however, nearly two dozen Biomorph plaques were recovered in two megalithic tombs at Coudelaria de Alter (Portalegre). Full publication of the sites and the plaques associated with these sites is in progress (Oliveira 2005).

ch apter 6 1. This chapter draws on and develops two previously published works (Lillios 2007 and 2008).

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i l lus t r at ion cr e di ts

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1.3

a. Hurtado Pérez et al. 2002: Fig. 5 b. Obermaier 1919: Lám. I

1.4

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XIV b. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. X

1.8

Leisner et al. 1969: Pl. B

1.11

b. Leisner 1965: Tafel 131, 58

2.1

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 12, 14, 4 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 2, 13 c. Correia 1921: Fig. 62

2.2

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXI, 17 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 22, 1, 39 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 14, 1, 57 d. Almagro Gorbea 1973: Fig. 39, 10 e. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 4, 6, 2

2.3

a. Leisner 1998: Tafel 74, 5 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 66 c and d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 53, 7, 11

2.4

a and b. Almagro Basch 1963: Fig. 5 c and d. Leisner 1965: Tafel 27, 64 e and f. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 2, 12 g and h. Hurtado Pérez 1999: Fig. 6, 4

2.5

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXXIV, 16 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 60 c. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXXIX, 30

2.6

a. Leisner 1965: Tafel 27, 70 b. Leisner 1965: Tafel 6, 61 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 42, 1, 26 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 14, 1, 56

2.7

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 7 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 37, 28

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i l lus t r at ion cr e di ts c. Leisner 1965: Tafel 27, 62 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 20, 2, 29 e. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 73 2.8

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 37 b. Santos and Ferreira 1969: Fig. 9, p. 59 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 43, 1, 39 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 42, 1, 27 e. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 1, 3 f. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 6, 1

2.9

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXXV, 19 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 14, 1, 55 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 42, 1, 29 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 2, 13

2.10

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 62 b. Correia 1921: Fig. 38

2.11

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 71 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 5, 3 c. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXI, 5

2.12

a. Leisner 1965: Tafel 27, 70 b. Leisner 1965: Tafel 6, 60

2.13

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 9, 12 b. Leisner 1965: Tafel 131, 59 c. Almagro Gorbea 1973: Fig. 43, 90 d. Leisner 1965: Tafel 131, 60 e. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 22, 1, 43 f. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 28, 1, 55 g. Leisner 1965: Tafel 27, 66

2.14

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 9 b. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 11 c. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 7 d. Viana 1953: Fig. 25a, b e. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 4 f. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 6

2.15

a. Ferreira et al. 1975: Fig. 12, 10 b. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 19 c. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 2

2.16

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 16, 18, 8 b. Leisner 1965: Tafel 39, 109 c. Leisner 1965: Tafel 39, 112

2.17

a. Leisner 1965: Tafel 71, 88 b. Leisner 1965: Tafel 131, 54 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 42, 2, 23

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i l lus t r at ion cr e di ts 2.18

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: XXVIII, 37 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 1, 3 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 22, 1, 36 d. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXXIV, 16 e. Leisner 1965: Tafel 131, 52 f. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XI, 72

2.20 a. Leisner 1965: Tafel 6, 67 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 6, 2, c. Santos and Ferreira 1969: Fig. 7, 73 d. Márquez et al. 1952: Lam. XXIV, 2 e. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 69 f. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 22, 1, 36 g. Leisner 1965: Tafel 131, 52 2.21

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 3, 4, 8 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 12, 14, 4 c. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXI, 20 d. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 37

2.22

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 24 b. Viana 1953: Fig. 22 c. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXXIV, 8 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 58

2.23

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: XXVIII, 29 b. Leisner 1965: Tafel 27, 63 c. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 14 d. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXI, 16 e. Leisner 1965: Tafel 131, 59

2.25

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 8, 9, 2 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 12, 14, 3 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 53, 1, 4 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 11, 3, 1 e. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 11, 3, 2

2.27

a. Leisner 1965: Tafel 39, 118 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 29, 20 c. Leisner 1965: Tafel 39, 107

2.29

a. Márquez et al. 1952: Lam. XL, 1 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 28, 1, 54 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 12, 12

2.31

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 55, 2 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 4, 5, 6 c. Frankowski 1920: Fig. 2 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 4, 5, 8 e. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXXIV, 7

203

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i l lus t r at ion cr e di ts 2.33

a. Leisner 1998: Tafel 75, 2 b. Leisner 1998: Tafel 75, 2 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 10 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 55, 1, 1 e. Almagro Gorbea 1973: Fig. 53, 203 f. Bueno Ramírez et al. 2000a: Fig. 4 g. Bueno Ramírez et al. 2000a: Fig. 4

2.35

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 53, 7, 3 b. Gonçalves 1992: Fig. 27 c. Gonçalves 1992: Fig. 28 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 11, 1, 90

2.37

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 61 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 14, 1, 53 c. Calado 2001: Est. 32, 8

2.39

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 78 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 78 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 6, 4 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 9, 2

3.9

a and b. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXI, 19

3.10

a. Leisner 1965: Tafel 39, 113 b. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 20 c. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXI, 21

3.11

Parreira 2005

3.12

a and b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 42, 1, 17

3.13

Silva and Soares 1981: Fig. 7

3.14

a. Correia 1921: Fig. 76 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 17, 4, 6 c. Veiga 1887: Est. IX d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 14, 1, 54 e. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 52 f. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXI, 28 g. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 57

3.15

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 62 b. Correia 1921: Fig. 38

3.16

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 3, 4, 8 b. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXI, 20

3.17

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 11, 3, 2

3.21

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 25 b. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 33

204

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i l lus t r at ion cr e di ts c. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XI, 71 d. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XIII, 37 e. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 17 f. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 16 g. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 4 h. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 9 i. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 11 j. Ferreira et al. 1975: Fig. 13, 22 k. Ferreira et al. 1975: Fig. 12, 11 l. Ferreira et al. 1975: Fig. 12, 14 m. Leisner 1965: Tafel 6, 60 n. Leisner 1965: Tafel 6, 61 o. Veiga 1887: Est. I p. Veiga 1887: Est. II q. Spindler 1981: Tafel 8, 83 r. Spindler 1981: Tafel 9, 84 s. Santos and Ferreira 1969: Fig. 7, 77 t. Almagro Gorbea 1973: Fig. 48, 141 u. Isidoro 1971: Fig. 15b v. Isidoro 1971: Fig. 15a w. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 6, 6–7, 3 x. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 6, 6–7, 2 4.3

Brody et al. 1983: Colorplate 35

4.6

Briard 1995: 181

4.8

a. Gonçalves 1992: Fig. 28 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 53, 7, 6

4.9

Leisner 1965: Tafel 153, 2

4.12

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 53, 7, 11 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 53, 7, 9

4.13

Bernabeu Aubán 1989: Fig. II, 2

4.14

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXXVI, 1 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 4, 5, 12 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 29, 26 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 29, 27

4.16

a. Leisner 1965: Tafel 30, 16

4.17

a. Bueno Ramírez 1995: Fig. 17, 1 b. Bueno Ramírez 1995: Fig. 13 c. Bueno Ramírez 1995: Fig. 36, 2

4.18

a. Leisner 1965: Tafel 128, 1 b. Leisner 1965: Tafel 34, 1

205

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i l lus t r at ion cr e di ts 4.19

Leisner 1965: Tafel 115, 3

5.2

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 45 b. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 42 c. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 40 d. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 46 e. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 55 f. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 39 g. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 43 h. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 38

5.4

a. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 24 b. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 23 c. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 33 d. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 19 e. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 25 f. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 28 g. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 21

5.6

a. Almagro Basch 1963: Fig. 5 b. Almagro Basch 1963: Fig. 4

5.8

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 22, 1, 31 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 22, 1, 22 c. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 22, 1, 32 d. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 17 e. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 16 f. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 8 g. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 4 h. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 5 i. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 9 j. Almagro Basch 1961–1962: Fig. 7

5.16

a. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 34, 2, 13 b. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 14, 1, 55 c. Ferreira et al. 1975: Fig. 11, 4 d. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 27, 1, 59 e. Santos and Ferreira 1969: Fig. 6, 67 f. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 42, 1, 29 g. Valera et al. 2002: Fig. 4 h. Leisner and Leisner 1959: Tafel 43, 1, 38 i. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXVIII, 20 j. Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est. XXXV, 19 k. Gut 1990: Taf. 4c

206

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i n de x

Italic page numbers refer to figures. Åberg, Nils, 29 Acenha de la Borrega (Cáceres, Spain), 66 adzes, 119, 137, 137 agency: of material culture, 114, 173; of plaques, 114–115, 123, 133, 134, 140 agriculture, 5, 8–9, 13, 131, 175 Alapraia (Lisbon, Portugal), 50, 109 Alentejo province, Portugal: acidic soils of, 17; herringbone plaques in, 156; materialized lineage system in, 169; megalithic tombs of, 10–11, 111, 113, 173; mobility in, 175; nonperforated plaques from, 110; pastoral art of, 28; and plaques with low register numbers, 147; raw materials from, 5, 19, 81, 118, 174; textiles in, 132, 180n7; travelers in, 176 Aljezur (Faro, Portugal), plaques from, 36, 48, 50, 53, 55, 57, 59, 102 Almagro Gorbea, María José, 28, 31–32 Amanita muscaria, 128, 129 ambiguity: and agency of plaques, 114–115; of Biomorph plaques, 51–52, 126; field/ ground ambiguity, 48, 50, 115; low-level/ high-level ambiguities, 115–117, 179n2; in visual perception, 116–117, 118 Ameghino, Florentino, 1, 21–22, 23, 142 amphibolite, 1, 3, 5, 78, 80, 81, 174 amulets, 1, 21, 22, 172 ancestors: ancestral landscapes, 5, 10–11; relics of, 16, 172; worship of, 171 animals: as domesticates, 7–8, 9, 170; as metaphors, 121–124, 126–131; shamans identified with, 126–127

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Anta 2 do Couto da Espanhola, Portugal, 11 Anta 3 da Herdade de Santa Margarida, 36 Anta da Herdade dos Galvões (Évora, Portugal), 136. See also Galvões Anta da Marquesa (Portalegre, Portugal), 136. See also Marquesa Anta Grande do Olival da Pega (Évora, Portugal), 14, 16. See also Olival da Pega I Anta Grande do Zambujeiro (Évora, Portugal), 12, 13, 165 Antas (Évora, Portugal), 136 anthropomorphic representations, 14, 21, 27–30, 34, 35. See also Biomorph plaques archaeology and archaeologists: approach to material culture, 114; Correia on, 27; and diff usionism, 24; and ethnographic comparisons, 28–29; and evidence of violent conflict, 12; excavations of engraved stone plaques, 14, 17, 19, 113, 121; and Gardin’s classification systems, 32; and idealist models, 4; and intentionality of ancient peoples, 39–40; and material mnemonics, 171; and memory studies, 5; on Mother Goddess, 7; and nationalism, 21, 23; and ocularity in plaques, 122–123; and poststructuralism, 142; and research on plaques, 19, 20, 22–23; Simões on, 21, 27 architectural mimesis, 173 Argentina, 21–22 artisans: and assertive style, 46–48, 179n1; conventions used by, 144; and genealogical model, 152; intentionality of, 38,

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i n de x artisans (continued) 39–40, 42, 134, 152; specialization of, 101, 103. See also engraving Assyrian motifs, 26–27 asymmetry: of barn owl, 124, 126; and formal variability, 42, 43; Gonçalves on, 36; and stylistic variability, 50–51, 50, 101, 102. See also symmetry Avis (Portalegre, Portugal), 111, 113 axes: in Bronze Age, 140; and burial practices, 11; in Early and Middle Neolithic Iberia, 134; engraved stone plaques compared to, 30, 117–119, 121, 137, 140, 173– 174; hafted axes, 21, 137, 137; raw materials for, 5 Azinheira (Évora, Portugal), 165 Aztec writing system, 141, 152 Bachofen, Johann Jakob, 27–28 bacula, 30, 135, 136, 137, 139, 145 bands: variability in Classic plaques, 55, 56, 158, 164; vertical band motif, 42, 44, 135, 156, 164 Barbacena (Portalegre, Portugal), 68 Barber, Elizabeth, 131–132, 133 barn owl (Tyto alba), 122, 124, 125, 130–131, 169 Beaker period, 19, 139, 140 Bell Beaker ceramics, 139, 139 biography/life history of plaques: creation of plaques, 82–103; Estácio da Veiga on, 23; and historical and sociopolitical landscape, 76; possible trajectories of, 112, 113; and raw materials, 77–82, 113; and recycling, 19, 110, 113; use of, 103–110, 144; Vasconcelos on, 24 Biomorph plaques: ambiguous qualities of, 51–52, 126; Biomorph Simple plaques, 68, 69, 70, 123, 126, 129–131, 169; Biomorph Whiskered plaques, 70, 70, 71, 72, 103, 123, 126, 127, 129–131, 132, 169; classification of, 68, 70; design elements of, 123–124, 124, 140, 145, 166, 169; geographic distribution of, 69, 70, 71, 72, 103, 130–131, 135, 166, 180n5; perforations of, 110, 122. See also anthropomorphic representations; zoomorphic representations

bipartite plaques: Classic plaques as, 51, 52–53, 53, 56; and design elements, 40, 42, 42; and strap curvature variability, 47, 49; and stylistic variability, 50, 51 Boone, Elizabeth, 141, 143 Bradley, Richard, 11, 173 Brissos 6 (Évora, Portugal), plaques from, 40, 48, 53, 55, 95, 97, 157 Bronze Age, 133, 140 Buddhism, and ocular motifs, 123 Bueno Ramírez, Primitiva, 34, 137 Buraco da Pala (Bragança, Portugal), 127 burial practices: and apotropaic images, 131; and bacula, 135; collective nature of burials, 150; in Early Bronze Age, 14; and economics, 131; and eyed ceramics, 139; and function of plaques, 109, 110, 144; in Late Neolithic Iberia, 11; and mnemonic practices, 170; and poppy plant, 127; and recycling of plaques, 110; and ritual axes, 137; secondary burials, 11, 110, 170; and settlement patterns, 14, 175; and textile artifacts, 132, 133; and tools and plaques, 118 burial sites: artisans attached to, 103; engraved plaques in, 1, 4; residential occupation associated with, 11; reuse of, 17, 19, 133, 149, 150, 171–172; structures of, 170; unfinished plaques in, 82, 83. See also megalithic tombs; tholoi Cabeças (Évora, Portugal), 43 Cabeço (Portalegre, Portugal), 55, 96 Cabeço da Arruda (Lisbon, Portugal), 16, 43, 47, 55, 102 Cabeço do Pé da Erra (Santarém, Portugal), 82 Cáceres, Spain, 79. See also specific sites Caeira 7 (Évora, Portugal): plaques from, 45, 79, 80, 94, 95, 143; slate from, 79, 143; unfinished plaque from, 83 Candeeira (Évora, Portugal), 72 Carenque (Lisbon, Portugal), 128 Carpenter, Edmund, 33 Cartailhac, Émile, 21, 22, 23 Carvão (Évora, Portugal), 44, 55, 74 Casa Branca (Évora, Portugal), 43

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i n de x Casa da Moura (Portugal), 22, 172 Castro, Luis de Albuquerque e, 30, 45, 82 Cavaleiros (Portalegre, Portugal), 50 caves, 8, 9, 10, 14, 173 Cebolinho 1 (Évora, Portugal), 42, 53, 56, 66 Central American culture, 121–122 ceramics: animal imagery in, 122; Bell Beaker ceramics, 139, 139; designs reflected in plaques, 30; of Early Bronze Age, 14; geometric motifs of, 139, 140; of Middle Neolithic, 134; ocular motifs of, 11, 138, 139; and textiles, 134, 135, 137 chaînes opératoires, 36, 38, 76, 82, 88, 96, 174 checkerboard motif: of Classic hybrid plaques, 164; of Classic plaques, 56; and design irregularities, 45, 45; engraving of, 94–95, 94, 96; and formal variability, 42, 44; geographic distribution of, 145, 149, 156, 161; lack of, in slate bacula, 135; lack of, in Transitional plaques, 59; registers of Classic checkerboard plaques, 145, 146, 147, 156–157, 161 chert, 86, 87, 97, 99 chevron motif: in Biomorph Simple plaques, 169; in Biomorph Whiskered plaques, 72, 123; in ceramics, 139; in Classic hybrid plaques, 164; in Classic plaques, 56; and formal variability, 42, 44; geographic distribution of, 149, 159; registers of Classic chevron plaques, 145, 150–151, 152, 152, 159; in slate bacula, 135; and style variability, 48, 50, 50; in Transitional plaques, 59, 166; in Unipartite plaques, 62 Christian shrines, 11, 111, 113, 171–172 Classic plaques: band variability in, 55, 56, 158, 164; base designs, 56, 145, 158, 158, 163, 164; as bipartite plaques, 51, 52–53, 53, 56; design elements of, 52–53, 55, 56, 56, 94–95, 94, 96, 145, 158, 158, 163, 164; fragment of, 80; geographic distribution of, 52, 54, 135, 149, 159, 160, 161, 162; multistability of, 115; percentage of plaques by base design and register, 158; registers of, 56, 56, 145, 149, 158, 166, 174; registers of checkerboard plaques, 145, 146, 147, 156–157, 161; registers of chevron plaques, 145, 150–151, 152,

152, 159; registers of triangle plaques, 147, 152, 153–156, 156, 157, 157, 162, 174; registers of zigzag plaques, 145, 148, 149, 156, 160; seriation of, 158, 163; and sides engraved, 52, 123; standardization of, 144, 145; strap motif of, 52–53, 55, 149, 156, 158, 164; textile imagery of, 140; top designs, 52, 55, 56, 158, 163, 164 collar motif: in Classic hybrid plaques, 164, 180n4; in Classic plaques, 156, 164; curvature in, 101; in Transitional plaques, 57 colonialism, 26, 172, 176 color: and clusters of bone groups, 11; significance of, 118, 121, 174, 179n3; variation in slate, 77, 79 Comenda (Évora, Portugal), 11, 12 Comenda 1 (Évora, Portugal), 102, 152 Comenda 2 (Évora, Portugal), 53, 102, 152 Comenda da Igreja (Évora, Portugal): Classic plaques from, 55, 56, 94, 95, 96, 98; and formal variability in plaques, 41, 42, 43, 45; hybrid plaques from, 165; motifs for plaques from, 147; Recycled plaques from, 74, 111, 113; Style Variant plaques from, 72; and stylistic variability in plaques, 46 communication: specificity of, 143, 145; technologies of, 141. See also writing composite form: and Biomorph Simple plaques, 70; and Classic plaques, 52; and formal variability, 38; and Hoe plaques, 59; Lisboa on, 33; of plaques, 14; and Strappy plaques, 64 copper, 5, 14, 30, 87 Copper Age (3000–2000 BC). See Late Neolithic (3500–2000 BC) Correia, Vergílio, 1, 7, 24, 27, 28, 32 Coudelaria de Alter (Portalegre, Portugal), 180n5 Couta da Biscaia 1 (Portalegre, Portugal), 102 Cova da Moura (Lisbon, Portugal), 102 Cova de L’Or (Alicante, Spain), ceramics from, 134, 135, 137 crania, 11, 16, 17, 172–173 Crato (Portalegre, Portugal), 60, 68, 95, 97 cromlechs (stone circles), 81, 81

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i n de x Cueva de la Mora (Huelva, Spain): plaques from, 41, 70, 127, 132; trepanned skulls from, 172 Cueva de los Murciélagos (Córdoba, Spain), 127 Cueva de los Murciélagos (Granada, Spain), 127, 134 Cueva del Toro (Málaga, Spain), 127 curation, 19, 172–173 cylindrical idols, 11 Déchelette, Joseph, 26, 28, 29 delayed-return societies, 131, 170 design elements: of Biomorph plaques, 123– 124, 124, 140, 145, 166, 169; of Biomorph Whiskered plaques, 70; of bipartite plaques, 40, 42, 42; cataloguing of, 35, 36–37; of Classic plaques, 52–53, 55, 56, 56, 94–95, 94, 96, 145, 158, 158, 163, 164; corrections in, 3, 96, 143; diagonality/slantedness of, 47, 49; and emblemic style, 46; and engraving, 94–96, 94, 97; and field/ ground ambiguity, 48, 50, 115; and formal variability, 38, 40, 42, 42, 43, 44, 45, 45; function of, 19, 21, 26–27; and heraldry, 33, 164, 177n6; of hybrid plaques, 164, 165; idiosyncratic use of, 3–4, 46, 48, 50–51, 50, 95, 101, 102, 103, 152, 179n1; Leisners on, 30; patterns in, 142, 147; repetition in, 1, 42; and single-hatching, 46, 46; and style similarity, 7, 101, 103, 144; of Transitional plaques, 42, 42, 51, 57, 57, 59, 166; types of, 14; variation in, 23; Vasconcelos on, 24 Dolmen das Conchadas (Lisbon, Portugal), plaques from, 39, 41, 43, 47, 48, 57 domesticates, 7–8, 9, 170 Early Bronze Age (2000–1500 BC), 11, 13–14, 17 Early Neolithic of Iberia, 7–8, 133, 134, 171 eastern Mediterranean, 7, 8, 19, 27, 30, 32, 142 economics: and burial practices, 131; of Early Neolithic in Iberia, 7–8; and identity, 5; of Late Neolithic, 5, 13, 170, 175; and slate industry, 77 Egyptian plaques, 24, 26, 178n13 Egyptian writing, 152

Eneolithic period, 26, 29 engraved stone plaques: agency of, 114–115, 123, 133, 134, 140; axeness of, 30, 117–119, 121, 137, 140, 173–174; chronology of, 17, 19, 26–29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 169; classification of, 19, 29–37, 51–52; crania associated with, 16, 17; crystalline microstructure of, 1, 3; dating of, 8, 17, 19, 21, 24; evolution of, 19, 26–27, 28, 32, 113; functions of, 1, 4, 5, 19–24, 26–30, 32, 33, 35, 103–110, 141–144, 145; history of scholarship on, 19–37, 177–178n3; iconography of, 34, 35, 144; illustrations versus photographs of, 35, 36, 101, 103; individuals associated with, 16, 19, 33; meaning of, 19–20, 35, 134, 145; origins of, 19, 23–29, 30; painting of, 28, 121; seriating of, 59; site distribution, 14, 15, 18, 31; site types, 14, 16; small scale of, 114, 140; as static entities, 76; themes of, 14–19; theories concerning, 1, 4, 24. See also biography/life history of plaques; design elements; manufacture of plaques; plaque types; production of plaques; reused plaques; variability of plaques engraving: and chaînes opératoires, 36, 88; and design corrections, 3, 96, 98; and patterns of alternating dark and light fields, 94–96, 94, 97; reengraving, 110, 144, 172; and registers, 39–40, 42, 88, 89, 91, 91, 92, 93–94, 93, 95, 96, 97; replication experiments on, 4, 30, 87–88, 88, 94–95, 174; styles of, 22, 23, 24, 30, 152; and stylistic variability, 101; tools for, 23, 87, 88; on unfinished plaques, 82. See also sides engraved Escoural (Évora, Portugal): plaques from, 44, 48, 55, 102, 165, 172; tholos of, 16, 171–172 Espadanal (Évora, Portugal), 124 ESPRIT (The Engraved Stone Plaque Registry and Inquiry Tool): and cataloguing of plaques, 35–36, 37, 52, 143; Classic triangle plaques in, 149; and stylistic variability, 46, 101 Estácio da Veiga, Sebastião Philippes Martins, 22–23, 24 ethnographic studies: in Africa, 170; approach to studying plaques, 20; and Car-

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i n de x tailhac, 22; and Frankowski, 28–29; and material mnemonics, 171; and positioning of object elements to record genealogies, 150; of shamans, 126; and Simões, 21; of slate quarrying, 81–82; of symbolic potency of axes, 119; of travel, 175; and Vasconcelos, 24, 26 Évora, Portugal: Classic plaques of, 52, 53; concentration of plaques in, 14; dispersal of plaques from, 149; pinecone idols from, 129; Recycled plaques from, 74; reused plaques from, 37; slate bacula from, 135; Strappy plaques of, 79; Style Variant plaques of, 72; stylistic variability of plaques in, 47. See also specific sites Extremadura region, Spain, 81, 110 Farisoa (Évora, Portugal), 11, 12 Faro, Portugal, 53. See also specific sites Ferreirinhos (Castelo Branco, Portugal), 41 fishnet motif, 53, 55, 156 flint, 23, 30, 85, 87 Folha da Amendoeira (Beja, Portugal), 31, 49, 50, 56 Folha das Barradas (Lisbon, Portugal), 138 fragmentation, and recycling of plaques, 19, 110, 172 France, 22 Frankowski, Eugeniusz, 1, 28–29 funerary rites. See burial practices Galvões (Évora, Portugal): plaques from, 39, 39, 41, 44, 165. See also Anta da Herdade dos Galvões Gardin, Jean-Claude, 32, 34 Gell, Alfred, 122, 140 gender, 175–176 genealogical information: from Biomorph plaques, 169; inscriptive recording of, 174; legitimating of, 170; and Maori, 150–151; from register numbers, 149, 150, 152, 158, 166; and seriation principles, 156. See also lineage geometric motifs: Almagro Gorbea on, 31– 32; of bacula, 30, 139; of Biomorph Whiskered plaques, 72; Bueno Ramírez on, 34;

of ceramics, 139, 140; and chronology of plaques, 19, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33; Correia on, 27, 29; Frankowski on, 28, 29; Gimbutas on, 31; Gonçalves on, 35; Leisners on, 30; of plaques, 3, 14, 21; Rodrigues on, 34; Louis Siret on, 26; standardization of, 144; unity in, 131–132 Gimbutas, Marija, 28, 30–31, 34, 122, 123, 127 glottographic writing, 141, 142, 152 Gonçalves, Victor dos Santos: on annexes to megaliths, 11; and cataloguing of plaques, 36–37; on manufacture of plaques, 36, 82, 88; on Mother Goddess, 1, 28, 35, 36; on perforations, 110; on Reguengos de Monsaraz region, 3 Gorafe (Granada, Spain), 8 granite, 80, 81, 86 Granja de Céspedes (Badajoz, Spain), plaques from, 49, 57, 89, 102, 152, 156, 157 Helms, Mary, 121–122, 175 heraldry: and design elements, 33, 164, 177n6; and function of plaques, 5, 20, 33, 35. See also genealogical information; lineage Herdade da Ordem 1 (Portalegre, Portugal), plaques from, 24, 40, 43, 44, 72, 93, 165 herringbone motif, 42, 44, 62, 132, 135, 156, 164 Hoe plaques: geographical distribution of, 59, 61, 135, 166, 168; perforations of, 59, 110; as plaque type, 51, 59, 60, 61; registers of, 95, 97, 166, 168 Horta Velha do Reguengo (Portalegre, Portugal), 48 Huelva (Huelva, Spain), 14, 70, 127, 129 human representation. See anthropomorphic representations; Biomorph plaques; representations of the dead hybrid plaques, 42, 44, 56, 164, 165, 180n4 Iberian Peninsula: archaeological studies in, 20–21; axe as metaphor in, 119; cultural setting of, 7–14; distribution of amphibolite and slate, 78; distribution of plaque sites, 14, 15; Early Neolithic in, 7–8; environmental regimes of, 13; Late Neo-

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i n de x Iberian Peninsula (continued) lithic in, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 177n2; megalithic tombs of, 10, 10; Phoenician colonization of, 26; southwest Iberia, 1, 3; textile industry in, 132–133, 134 iconography: of Early Bronze Age, 14, 140; of plaques, 34, 35, 144 Idanha-a-Nova (Castelo Branco, Portugal), 68 identities: and animal imagery, 122; and burial practices, 170; creation of, 4–5; and heraldry, 177n6; and imagery of bacula, 137; plaques as symbols for, 121; plaques linked to, 149; social identities, 5, 176 immediate-return societies, 131, 170 Inka khipu, 141, 142, 143, 152 interpretive communities, 144 inverted V motif, 53, 55, 156 Irian Jaya, 81, 119 Iron Age, 170 Jazigo de Alcarapinha (Portalegre, Portugal), 70 Lameira (Portalegre, Portugal), 102 Lapa do Bugio (Setúbal, Portugal), 35, 149, 172 Lapa do Fumo (Setúbal, Portugal), 127, 128 Lapeira 1 (Évora, Portugal), 93 Late Bronze Age, 140 Late Neolithic (3500–2000 BC): agricultural production in, 8–9, 131; and architectural mimesis, 173; burial practices in, 11; burial sites of, 1; economics of, 5; enacting of mnemonic practices, 175; and Escoural, 171; imagery of material culture, 4, 134– 135, 137, 139–140; lack of Iberian colonization, 7, 172; social climate of, 12–13; textile industry in, 132–133; and themes of plaques, 14–19; time span of, 177n2; tombs of, 10; tools of, 80 Leisner, Georg, 29–33, 45, 94, 117 Leisner, Vera, 29–33, 45, 94, 117 Leroi-Gourhan, André, 76 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 121 life history. See biography/life history of plaques

lineage: Classic plaques as indices of, 158, 166; endogamous lineage, 164; and heraldry, 177n6; movements of, 169; Strappy plaques as indices of, 166; and symbolic meaning, 119. See also genealogical information Lisboa, Isabel M. Gomes, 28, 33, 35 Lisbon, Portugal: Classic plaques of, 53; dolmens of, 169, 173; limestone ritual adzes from, 137, 137; multistability of plaques from, 115; perforated plaques from, 110, 113; pinecone idols from, 127, 129; plaques excavated from, 14. See also specific sites long-distance travel, 5, 14, 175 loom weights, 132–133, 139 Luba of Zaire (DRC), lukasa memory boards of, 150 manufacture of plaques: Castro on, 30; Estácio da Veiga on, 23; Gonçalves on, 36, 82, 88; mistakes in, 40, 82, 96; multiple origins of, 19; and replication experiments, 30, 82, 84–87, 85, 86, 96–97, 99, 99, 118; stone tools compared to, 118; and stylistic variability, 30, 144. See also engraving; production of plaques Maori, 119, 121, 150–151 Marquesa (Portalegre, Portugal), 66, 80. See also Anta da Marquesa Marvão (Portalegre, Portugal), 40 material culture: agency of, 114, 173; and animals as visual metaphors, 121–122; biographical approach to, 80; color’s significance in, 179n3; dualism of, 76; imagery of, 4, 134–135, 137, 139–140; Late Neolithic compared to Early Bronze Age, 14; material metaphors, 117; and media transfer, 173–174; as reflection of social and cultural behavior, 7, 20 Maya writing, 143, 152 meaning: and megalithic code, 147; of plaques, 19–20, 35, 134, 145; and signifier/ signified relationship, 142. See also metaphors; social meaning; symbolic meaning media transfer, 173–174 megalithic tombs: adaptation into Christian

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i n de x shrines, 111, 113; annexes of, 11, 12, 171; Biomorph plaques in, 180n5; construction of, 8; of Gorafe, 8; of Iberian Peninsula, 10, 10, 81; of Monte dos Almendres, 81; orientation of, 173; origin of stones, 175; plaques found in, 14; and settlement patterns, 11, 12 memory: and burial practices, 170; and construction of past, 5; of individuals versus groups, 14; lukasa memory boards, 150; and raw materials, 81; and skills of specialists, 103; stabilization of, 171. See also mnemonic practices menhirs (standing stones), 11, 34, 81, 81, 170, 171 Mértola (Beja, Portugal), 31, 46, 70 Mesoamerican culture, 121 Mesopotamian tokens, 150 Mesopotamian writing, 152 metaphors: animals as, 121–124, 126–131; and axeness of plaques, 30, 117–119, 121, 137, 140, 173–174; lives of, 133–135, 137, 139– 140 Middle Neolithic of Iberia, 133, 134 Middle Paleolithic, 171 Los Millares (Almería, Spain), 9, 12, 31, 139 El Millarón (Cáceres, Spain), 137, 138 Mimbres pottery, 117, 118 mind traps, 1, 116, 117 mnemonic practices: changes in, 5; debates concerning, 142; evidence for, 176; and mimesis, 5, 173–174; and ritual practices, 170. See also memory mobility: and function of plaques, 107–108; long-distance travel, 5, 14, 175–176 Monte Canelas (Faro, Portugal), 16, 90, 91 Monte de Outeiro (Beja, Portugal), 138, 139 Monte dos Almendres (Évora, Portugal), 81 Monte Velho (Beja, Portugal), 44, 165 Mother Goddess: genealogical markers compared to, 158; Gimbutas on, 28, 30– 31, 34, 122; and historiography of plaque research, 7, 20, 21, 27–31, 33, 34, 35, 36; plaques depicting, 1; and plaque types, 51 Müller-Lyer illusion, 116, 117

museum collections, 1, 17, 20, 29, 32, 37, 104 Necker cube, 115, 115 Obidos Lagoon (Leiria, Portugal), 137 ocular motifs: Almagro Gorbea on, 31; of Biomorph Simple plaques, 70; of Biomorph Whiskered plaques, 72; of ceramics, 11, 138, 139; of Classic zigzag plaques, 156; Gimbutas on, 31, 122; lack of, in Bronze Age, 140; lack of, in Early and Middle Neolithic Iberia, 134; Lisboa on, 33; and multitemporal intersubjectivities, 123; of plaques, 1; subocular lines, 69, 70, 70, 72, 123 Olival da Pega (Évora, Portugal), 105 Olival de Pega 1 (Évora, Portugal): bacula of, 136; cranial discs from, 172; plaques from, 2, 43, 44, 49, 53, 55, 56, 57, 102, 110, 147, 147, 149, 165; registers on plaques, 93. See also Anta Grande do Olival da Pega Olival da Pega 2 (Évora, Portugal), 11, 172 orthogonality of linear incisions, 47, 48, 101, 102 Ossa-Morena Zone (OMZ), 79–80 Others, 176 owl imagery: of Biomorph plaques, 122–124, 125, 126, 130–131; in ceramics, 139; owl goddess, 31, 122; use of, 134 Palmela (Setúbal, Portugal), 139 passage graves, 10, 10, 11, 14, 16, 174 Passo 1 (Évora, Portugal), plaques from, 40, 46, 55, 57, 88, 89, 93, 96 La Pastora (Sevilla, Spain), 10, 12 Pedra Branca (Setúbal, Portugal): and Beaker period, 19; plaques from, 49, 102, 139, 165 perforations: and band variability in Classic plaques, 164; bioconical and conical perforations, 96; of Biomorph Simple plaques, 70; of Biomorph Whiskered plaques, 72; of Classic plaques, 52; and cordage material, 104–105, 107, 108; and design, 42, 42; double-perforated plaques, 122; and function of plaques, 103–105, 107–110;

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i n de x perforations (continued) of Hoe plaques, 59, 110; in plaques, 14; of Recycled plaques, 74; reperforations, 24, 110, 172; and replication experiments, 84, 97, 99, 99; in ritual adzes, 137, 137; of Rug plaques, 62; and signs of wear, 22, 23, 24, 103–105, 109, 144; of Strappy plaques, 64, 110; of Transitional plaques, 59; of Unipartite plaques, 62; variation in number of, 38, 40, 52; wear pattern experiments, 104–105, 105, 106, 107–110, 108 Phoenician colonization of Iberia, 26, 27 La Pijotilla (Badajoz, Spain): settlement of, 9, 10, 11; tomb 2, 39, 41 pinecone idols, 127–129, 128 Pinto, Ana Maria, 32–33, 51 Pinto, Jorge Sá, 32–33, 51 La Pizarrilla (Badajoz, Spain), 38–39, 41, 152 Placa Nostra, 36–37 plant domesticates, 7–8, 9, 170 plaque types: Biomorph plaques, 51–52, 68, 68, 69, 70, 70, 71, 72; Classic plaques, 51, 52–53, 53, 54, 56; and classification, 19, 29– 37, 51–52; geographic distribution of, 52, 54, 145; Hoe plaques, 51, 59, 60, 61; meanings of, 145; and perforations, 109–110; Pinto and Pinto on, 32–33, 51; Recycled plaques, 52, 74, 74, 75; Rug plaques, 51, 62, 64, 64, 65; Strappy plaques, 51, 64, 66, 67; and style similarity, 101, 103; Style Variant plaques, 52, 72, 72, 73; Transitional plaques, 51, 57, 57, 59; Unipartite plaques, 42, 42, 51, 59, 62, 62, 63 politics: centralization of, 141; decentralization of, 14; and mnemonic practices, 170; and sociopolitical landscape, 12, 34, 76 poppy plant (Papaver somniferum), 127–128, 128, 129 Portalegre, Portugal: Recycled plaques from, 74; slate bacula from, 135; Strappy plaques from, 79, 166; Style Variant plaques from, 72; stylistic variability of plaques in, 47. See also specific sites Portimão (Faro, Portugal), 39 power: and elites, 13; of Escoural, 172; plaques

as symbols of, 22, 33, 119; and recycled plaques, 172; and writing, 141 El Pozuelo 6 (Huelva, Spain), 55 Prado de Lácara (Badajoz, Spain), 40 Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon, Portugal): crania from, 16, 17, 173; plaques from, 50, 62, 89 Praia de S. Torpes (Setúbal, Portugal), 92, 93 prehistorians: on civilizing sphere of eastern Mediterranean, 142; and classification of plaques, 29–37; and collections of plaques, 17; on origins of plaques, 26; on plaques as writing, 142; on production of plaques, 76; on religious and symbolic dimensions of plaques, 24, 26; study of plaques, 1, 7, 19, 20–23; on stylistic variability of plaques, 22, 23, 24, 30, 45; as term, 177n1 prehistoric/historic peoples, distinction between, 141, 142, 177n1 “primitive” peoples, Vasconcelos on, 24, 26 production of plaques: organization of, 101, 103, 179n1; scale of, 17, 103; scholarship on, 24, 33, 34; skills necessary for, 76, 103; and social and cultural behavior, 114. See also manufacture of plaques Quilter, Jeffrey, 143 raw materials: from Alentejo province, 5, 19, 81, 118, 174; Almagro Gorbea on, 31; availability of, 77, 79, 174; and biography/life history of plaques, 77–82, 113; distribution of, 78; social and symbolic meaning of, 77, 80–81; and stone axes compared to plaques, 118, 174. See also sandstone; schist; slate ray motif, 53, 55 rectangular form: of Biomorph Simple plaques, 70; of Classic plaques, 52; and classification, 34; and formal variability, 38; of plaques, 14; of Rug plaques, 62; stone axes compared to plaques, 118, 174; of Transitional plaques, 59; of Unipartite plaques, 62 Recycled plaques: and biography of plaques, 19, 110, 113; and crania, 172–173; geo-

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i n de x graphic distribution of, 74, 75; as plaque type, 52, 74, 74, 75 registers: of Classic checkerboard plaques, 145, 146, 147, 156–157, 161; of Classic chevron plaques, 145, 150–151, 152, 152; of Classic plaques, 56, 56, 145, 149, 158, 166, 174; of Classic triangle plaques, 147, 152, 153– 156, 156, 157, 157, 162, 174; of Classic zigzag plaques, 145, 148, 149, 156, 160; distribution of motifs, 147, 149; and formal variability, 39–40, 42; of Hoe plaques, 95, 97, 166, 168; horizontal registers, 39–40, 42, 56, 64, 88; number of registers, 39–40, 88, 89, 91, 91, 92, 93–94, 93, 95–96, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150–151, 152, 153–156, 156, 157–158, 158; percentage of plaques by base design and registers, 158; as proxy for time, 156–158; of Strappy plaques, 64, 166, 167; as structuring feature, 145; of Transitional plaques, 59, 166; of Unipartite plaques, 166 regularity/irregularity of lines, 47, 48 religious dimensions of plaques, 20, 24, 26, 30, 32. See also Mother Goddess; ritual practices remains of dead: circulation of, 5; plaques associated with, 149–150. See also skeletal remains replication experiments: and Castro, 30; and engraving, 4, 30, 87–88, 88, 94–95, 174; and equifinality, 84; finished plaque, 100; and grinding, 86–87, 86; as heuristic exercises, 82, 84; and organization of production, 101, 103; and perforations, 84, 97, 99, 99; and shaping, 84–86, 85; stone tools compared to slate plaques, 174 repolishing, and recycling of plaques, 110, 172 representations of the dead: and function of plaques, 1, 5, 20, 28, 29; role of eyes in, 123 reused plaques: and biographies/life histories of plaques, 19, 110, 113; from Évora, Portugal, 37; Recycled plaques, 19, 52, 74, 74, 75, 110, 113 Ribeira de Odivelas (Beja, Portugal), 74 Ribeiro, Carlos, 1, 20, 22 Richards, Morgan, 81–82 ritual practices: and delayed-return societies,

131; and display of plaques, 33; in Early Bronze Age, 14; and function of plaques, 110; liminal spaces of, 5; and mnemonic practices, 170; and small scale of plaques, 140. See also burial practices Rocio de Montinho (Évora, Portugal), 62 rock-cut tombs, 10, 14 rockshelters, 8, 9, 10, 14, 173 Rodrigues, Maria da Conceição Monteiro, 28, 31, 34 Rogil (Faro, Portugal), 104 Rug plaques: geographic distribution of, 65, 166; and meaning, 145; as plaque type, 51, 62, 64, 64, 65; and textile weaves, 132, 132 sandstone: Biomorph Simple plaques made from, 130, 131; as grinding surface, 86, 87; as raw material of plaques, 14, 34, 35, 77, 144 Santa Margarida 1 (Évora, Portugal), 44, 165 Santiago Maior (Évora, Portugal), 44, 53 São Bartolomé de la Torres (Huelva, Spain), 64 São Dinis, chapel of (Pavia, Portugal), 111 São Martinho de Sintra (Lisbon, Portugal), 128, 137 schist, as raw material of plaques, 11, 14, 33, 35, 77, 144 Schuster, Carl, 33 scientism, 4, 21 sedentism, 5, 8, 175 Sejos (Cantabria, Spain), 138 semasiographic writing systems, 143, 151– 152 seriation: of Classic plaques, 158, 163; principles of, 156–158 settlement patterns: and megalithic tombs, 11, 12; in Neolithic Iberia, 175; and unfortified sites of Early Bronze Age, 13–14 settlements: divergent trajectories of, 12–14; plaques associated with, 17, 113; size of, 9–10; textile production associated with, 132 Setúbal, Portugal, 110, 113, 137. See also specific sites shamans, 126–129, 164, 169

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i n de x shape: and formal variability, 38, 39. See also composite form; rectangular form; trapezoidal form shields, 119, 120 shoulders, plaques with, and classification, 29, 30 sides engraved: and agency of plaques, 114; and Biomorph plaques, 123, 126, 127; Bueno Ramírez on, 34; and Classic plaques, 52, 123; and formal variability, 38–39, 41; and Hoe plaques, 59; and Rug plaques, 62, 132; and Strappy plaques, 64; and Transitional plaques, 59; and Unipartite plaques, 62; and wear experiments, 108, 109 signifier/signified relationship, 142 Simões, Augusto Filippe, 1, 21, 23, 27 Siret, Henri, 26, 176 Siret, Louis, 26–27, 29, 127, 176 sites: geographic distribution of, 14, 15, 18, 31; homogeneity within, 101; and manufacture of plaques, 82; types of, 14, 16. See also burial sites and specific sites skeletal remains: Classic plaques associated with, 164; crania, 11, 16, 17, 172–173; dating of, 17, 19, 158; plaques associated with, 16, 19; potency of, 173; and secondary burials, 11; sorting of, 170 skeuomorphism, 173–174 slate: bacula made from, 134, 135, 136; Biomorph Whiskered plaques made from, 130; color variation in, 77, 79; distribution of, 18, 19, 77, 78; durability of, 144; as easily worked medium, 101; engraving of, 82, 144; metaphorical properties of, 121; in Middle Neolithic, 134; mill made of slate, 79; Ossa-Morena Zone, 79–80; processing of, 77; quarrying of, 81–82; as raw material of plaques, 11, 14, 34, 35; shaping of, 82; visible marks on, 143 Snyder, Howard, 1, 3 Sobreira (Portalegre, Portugal), 39, 55, 60 social climate: of Early Bronze Age, 14; of Early Neolithic, 7–8; of Late Neolithic, 5, 12–13, 170, 175 social identities, 5, 176

social meaning: and raw materials, 77, 80– 81; and stone tools and textiles, 134; and visual imagery, 140 social position: and identity, 5, 176; and megalithic tombs, 12; and travel, 175–176 sociopolitical landscape, 12, 34, 76 spalling, 85–87 spatial patterning, of plaques, 16, 110, 142 speech, writing tied to, 141, 142 spindle whorls, 132 standing stones (menhirs), 11, 34, 81, 81, 170, 171 stelae, 28, 34, 137, 138, 139, 174 stone circles (cromlechs), 81, 81 strap curvature, 47, 49, 101, 102, 180n3 strap motif, 52–53, 55, 149, 156, 158, 164 Strappy plaques: geographic distribution of, 64, 67, 79, 135, 167; perforations of, 64, 110; as plaque type, 51, 64, 66, 67; recycling of, 111, 113; registers of, 64, 166, 167; slate associated with, 79, 80; and textile imagery, 132; visible marks on, 143 structuralism, 34, 129 style: and asymmetry, 50–51, 50, 101, 102; defining variations in, 45–48; and diagonality of design elements, 47, 49; emblemic versus assertive style, 46; and field/ground ambiguity, 48, 50, 115; and framing, 46, 47; idiosyncrasy in, 3–4, 46, 48, 50–51, 50, 95, 101, 102, 103, 152, 179n1; and manufacture and production, 30, 82, 101, 103, 144, 169; and number of registers, 39–40, 88, 89, 91, 91, 92, 93–94, 93, 95–96, 152, 156; and orthogonality of linear incisions, 47, 48, 101, 102; prehistorians on, 22, 23, 24, 30, 45; and regional expression, 34; and single-line hatching, 46, 46; standardization in, 7, 30, 48, 101, 144, 166, 169; and strap curvature, 47, 49, 101, 102, 180n3; and symmetry, 47, 50, 51, 101, 102 Style Variant plaques, 52, 72, 72, 73 symbolic meaning: and agency, 140; and heraldry, 33; and raw materials, 77, 80–81; of slate plaques in form of axe, 119, 121, 174; and stone tools and textiles, 134 symmetry: and agency of plaques, 114; and

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i n de x formal variability, 42, 43, 45, 45; and stylistic variability, 47, 50, 51, 101, 102; and triangle motif, 47, 49. See also asymmetry Tabuyo del Monte (León, Spain), 138 Tagus riverway, 30, 169, 176 textiles: and ceramics, 134, 135, 137; imagery of, 132, 133, 140; plaques evoking, 33, 116, 131–133 tholoi, 10, 11, 12, 14 tholos of Escoural (Évora, Portugal), 16, 171–172 tholos tomb of La Pijotilla (Badajoz, Spain), 10 time: deep time, 5, 171; registers as proxy for, 156–158 tomb types, 10–12, 10, 14, 16, 16, 173. See also burial sites; megalithic tombs tools: amphibolite tools, 1, 3, 5, 80, 119, 174; and burial practices, 118; copper tools, 5; in Early and Middle Neolithic of Iberia, 134; for engraving, 23, 87, 88; plaques compared to, 117–119, 121, 174; and replication experiments, 84; and secondary burials, 11; skills for manufacture of, 82; unused tools within tombs, 103. See also axes Torre das Arcas 5 (Portalegre, Portugal), 64 Torre de Curvo 1 (Portalegre, Portugal), 60 Transitional plaques: design elements of, 42, 42, 51, 57, 57, 59, 166; geographic distribution of, 57, 58, 135; multistability of, 115; stylistic variability of, 50 trapezoidal form: of Biomorph Simple plaques, 70; of Classic plaques, 52; and classification, 34; and classification of plaques, 30; and formal variability, 38; of plaques, 14; stone axes compared to plaques, 118, 174; of Transitional plaques, 59; of Unipartite plaques, 62 travelers, status of, 5, 175–176 triangle motif: in Biomorph Simple plaques, 70; in Biomorph Whiskered plaques, 72, 123, 132, 169; in ceramics, 139; in Classic hybrid plaques, 164; in Classic plaques, 53, 55, 56; diagonality/slantedness of, 47, 49; in engraved stelae, 137; engraving of, 95– 96, 97; and formal variability, 42, 43, 44;

geographic distribution of, 145, 149, 157, 162; in Hoe plaques, 59, 95, 166; hybrid plaques with, 42, 44, 56; inversion of, 42, 129, 132, 166; registers of Classic triangle plaques, 147, 152, 153–156, 156, 157, 157, 162, 174; in Rug plaques, 62, 132, 166; in “shamanic” plaques, 129; in slate bacula, 135; in Strappy plaques, 166; symbolism of, 23; in Transitional plaques, 57, 59, 166; in Unipartite plaques, 62 Trincones 1 (Cáceres, Spain), 68, 121 tripartite compositional structure, 34 Tumulus de Jeromigo (Évora, Portugal), 42 Tyto alba (barn owl), 122, 124, 125, 130–131, 169 Unipartite plaques: design of, 42, 42, 51, 59, 62, 62; geographic distribution of, 62, 63, 135; registers of, 166. See also Rug plaques; Strappy plaques United States, great seal of, 119, 120 Upper Paleolithic, 171 Vale de Moinhos (Guarda, Portugal), 79 Vale de Rodrigo 1 (Évora, Portugal), 43, 44, 91, 165 Vale de Rodrigo 2 (Évora, Portugal), 11, 156 variability of plaques: Bueno Ramírez on, 34; and engraving styles, 23; formal variability, 38–45; stylistic variability, 45–51, 82, 101, 102, 103, 144, 169, 179n1 Variscan Orogeny, 79–80 Vasconcelos, José Leite de, 20, 24, 25, 45, 126 Vega del Guadancil (Cáceres, Spain), 68 Vega del Peso (Badajoz, Spain), 60 Velada (Évora, Portugal), 48, 64 vertical band motif, 42, 44, 135, 156, 164 Viana do Alentejo (Évora, Portugal), 93 Vila Nova de São Pedro (Santarém, Portugal), 17, 132, 175 visual culture: and agency, 114; and ambiguity in perception, 116–117, 118; imagery from, 173; and inversion of imagery, 129; and lives of metaphors, 133–135, 137, 139–140; and ocular imagery, 122–123; and

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i n de x visual culture (continued) origin of plaques, 19; shields in Western visual culture, 119, 120; and slate, 121 visual perception: and ambiguity of plaques, 114–117; and two-dimensionality of plaques, 114 whakapapa, 150–151 Woodburn, James, 131, 170 Woods, Alexander D.: and replication experiments, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 94–95, 99; and wear pattern experiments, 104–105, 107 writing: Ameghino on, 1, 22, 23, 142; elements for writing systems, 143–145; and function of plaques, 5, 20, 141–142, 143, 145; identification and decipherment of,

141; semasiographic writing systems, 143, 151–152; Vasconcelos on, 26 Zambujal (Lisbon, Portugal), 9, 9, 12, 17, 132, 175 zigzag motif: in Biomorph plaques, 164, 169; in Biomorph Simple plaques, 70, 123; in Biomorph Whiskered plaques, 130; in ceramics, 139; in Classic hybrid plaques, 164; in Classic plaques, 56; and formal variability, 42, 44; geographic distribution of, 149, 160; in loom weights, 132; registers of Classic zigzag plaques, 145, 148, 149, 156, 160; in Rug plaques, 62; in slate bacula, 135; in Transitional plaques, 166 zoomorphic representations, 14, 121–124, 126–131, 179n4. See also Biomorph plaques

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