2018-09-21 22:03:21
We belong to a species that likes to show off, a species whose members do not hesitate to use objects within their reach to obtain tools, weapons or decorations that make them appear more powerful to their peers. This attitude is very old, as proof of it in the archaeological sites often appear a multitude of objects that were the most precious possessions of their missing owners and mistresses.
When an archaeologist investigates a site, he brings to light the most precious belongings of the people who inhabited it: carved stone pieces, utensils, pieces of vessels and beads of amber, obsidian, jade, bone or metal that reveal the way of life , the culture or the feelings of its former owners.
Amber has been one of the most appreciated elements among the ancient settlers who inhabited the different regions of the Earth. Originating in the sap that dripped from the wounds of some tree species, its sticky, yellowish exudates accumulated, sometimes trapping insects and other small living beings. When the trees disappeared, their sap slowly fossilized, transforming into a rock that sometimes retains an attractive honey or greenish color of great beauty. It is this beauty that motivated the ancient inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula and many other places to use it to make their ornaments or as an offering to their gods.
Today in Hablando con Científicos, Mercedes Murillo Barroso, archaeologist and professor in the Department of Prehistory and Archeology at the University of Granada, is with us. The reason is the recent publication in the magazine PLOS One of an article that studies the extensive exchange networks that carried amber from deposits, sometimes remote, to the towns of the prehistoric inhabitants of Spain and Portugal.
The study combines knowledge of amber from two different branches of science: geology (geological amber) and archeology (archaeological amber). The geological deposits of amber are those places where the deposits were created, deposits in which geologists extract information about the environment in which the trees that gave rise to amber grew because the chemical composition of the pieces, the incrustations of animal or vegetable remains that they contain speak of the ecology of the place or the climate that prevailed in those remote times. On the other hand, when the pieces are extracted from the places of origin, it is humans who intervene, transport the pieces, trade with them, subject them to different manipulations to turn them into objects of decoration or worship, and thus, the pieces travel to sometimes huge distances until for various reasons they are buried in some archaeological site.
The team of archaeologists and geologists led by Mercedes Murillo has studied a set of 22 pieces of amber found in different archaeological sites in the Iberian Peninsula, between 4,000 and 1,000 years BC, using infrared spectroscopy techniques. The study has made it possible to make it known that the origin of the pieces found moves away as the populations are more recent. Prior to this work, it had been determined that, in the oldest deposits, dating back up to 35,000 years, the amber pieces found came from quarries located near human settlements. However, the origin of the amber found in deposits after the fourth millennium BC, is much more distant. The analyzes reveal that its origin is on the island of Sicily, in the middle of the Mediterranean, in quarries located more than 1,500 kilometers from the final destination. In contrast, the settlements after the second millennium contain amber that was extracted from deposits much further away, located in the countries on the shores of the Baltic Sea.
How did the pieces of Amber get from the quarries of northern Europe to the Iberian Peninsula? Mercedes Murillo comments that in those remote times it is not probable that there were direct trade routes that allowed merchandise to be taken from one place to another directly, it is most likely that the pieces were slowly passing from one town to another in successive exchanges until they reached their final destination after a journey that could have lasted hundreds of years.
In certain sites, such as the Montelirio Dolmen, located in the municipality of Castilleja de Guzmán, in the province of Seville, one of the most impressive archaeological sites of the Paleolithic period can be found. The excavations have revealed the existence of a funerary monument that contains two chambers, in one of which lies an important personage of the town and in another the remains of 19 young women, between 20 and 30 years of age, have been found. Among the remains, a multitude of objects made of amber, ivory and ostrich egg shells have been found. These remains, which are 4,200 years old, contain Sicilian amber and are thought to have been brought there following a route that passed through North Africa.
Mercedes Murillo Barroso, archaeologist and professor in the Department of Prehistory and Archeology at the University of Granada, speaks to us about these and many other things today. I invite you to listen to it.
Reference:
Mercedes Murillo Barroso et al. “Amber in prehistoric Iberia: New data and a review”. PLOS ONE | August 29, 2018
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