Drought brings to light a unique piece of pottery left behind by the Iberians after their flight from Cordoba


The two faces of the warrior pottery recently found at a site in Belmez (Córdoba), on the right, and a section of another piece with a spear-wielding warrior.

Before fleeing from the invaders, the Iberians left in their village of Sierra Boyera (Belmez, Córdoba), between the 6th and 2nd century BC, a surprise that has just been unearthed to the astonishment of archaeologists: a ceramic triangular section with two warriors in relief in perfect condition. With their helmets, their oval shields and their well-defined Iberian swords (falcatas), while they practice a bloodless ritual fight, with no intention of killing each other.

The historical puzzle of this hillside reveals that the settlement was suddenly abandoned by an invasion: the absence of Roman pottery, the levels of ashes, the documented landslides and the chronology of the ceramics indicate that everything happened very quickly, with hardly time to collect the essentials. Some 2,500 years later, in addition to the triangular-shaped, two-sided warriors, another ceramic of the same type has now emerged, with a third warrior throwing a spear, with only one side.




Thanks to the fact that the reservoir has been left at a minimum, with only 12% of its reserves, the Iberian site has once again been uncovered. Since 2017, this is the fourth intermittent archaeological campaign to dust off pieces, granted as a matter of urgency to avoid the heavy erosion brought by the rising waters and the plunderers. The researchers have already accumulated 8,000 fragments among amphorae, lead pieces, metallurgy, fish bones and bones in this walled settlement that was dedicated to the industrial pottery of containers. In 2021 the Filomena storm took them out of the site to send them home abruptly, and this excavation has ended this Tuesday. For the moment, the star is the warrior pottery, which seems to have no peers in the Peninsula during that pre-Roman period.

"They are very suggestive and singular pieces, we do not know representations like this in mold because they represent monomachies of pre-Roman societies of ritual component, without violent character, at first blood. It is really interesting," explains José Carlos Coria, an archaeologist specializing in pre-Roman ceramics from the universities of Valladolid and Granada. "The object was designed to transmit that symbolism of the monarchy, it is not only the drawing and the technique," extols Coria.

Pascual Perdiguero, an archaeologist specializing in protohistory and material culture at the University of Alicante, predicts: "I have not seen anything like it in the Peninsula and they [the warriors] will be a reference in protohistoric archaeology, because of the context in which they are found and preserved with such artistic quality. The interesting thing is that these pieces are not from poachers and for the first time we have them located, which can help us to understand these representations. They can have an impact on the dissemination of the works because they are very colorful of the cosmogony and how these civilizations understand the world".


Remains of the ceramic kiln at the Belmez site.

On the ground, around a ceramic oven in good condition and the remains of a blood mill, are the rooms that during August and early September have been excavated by about 20 volunteer archaeologists. Centuries later, the pre-Roman ceramic furnace was transformed into a metallurgy workshop for lead-silver, iron and bronze, with an anvil, forge and pipes, explain the researchers.


Aerial photo taken during the 1956 American flight, showing the site before a road crossed it in 1970.


-Where is the rest of the pottery, nothing else has turned up?

-Ask the swamp," answered Gonzalez caustically.


https://elpais.com/cultura/2022-09-2...rocHmu82y9edmw