They identify the oldest pieces of Baltic amber from the Iberian Peninsula

2023-10-10 14:14:22

A team of scientists from universities of Granada (UGR) and Cambridge has identified the oldest pieces of baltic amber from the Iberian Peninsula, demonstrating that this luxury material used in jewelry and crafts around the world was already imported a long time ago. more than 5,000 years.

The research, led by Mercedes Murillo-Barroso from the UGR – and in which Marcos Martinón-Torres and Araceli Martín Cólliga have collaborated – allows us to say “without fear of being wrong” that the arrival of Baltic amber to the Iberian Peninsula “it happened at least in the fourth millennium BC“. This is, “more than a millennium earlier than we thought, and which was probably integrated into broader exchange networks linked to the South of France”, according to Murillo-Barroso.

In Prehistory, amber (a fossil resin) was not a necessary raw material for the development of life, but it was highly valued and was part of exchange networks.

He exchange It is one of the many mechanisms by which we establish social relationships and many times the objects that are exchanged are not necessarily consumer goods necessary to live, but to decorative usessumptuous or symbolic.

Sometimes, especially in Adverse conditionsbelong to exchange networks It implies having mutual support, although these networks can also generate social inequalities and relationships of dependency, especially if the entire community does not have access to them or if the objects exchanged are not equivalent.

From the Upper Paleolithic

In Prehistory, the amber (a fossil resin) did not constitute a raw material necessary for the development of life, but it was highly valued and was part of the extensive exchange networks that were established.

The use of the multiple amber deposits of the Iberian Peninsula has been confirmed since the Superior paleolithic and, thanks to the research carried out for years by archaeologists, we know that, from the 4th Millennium BC, he sicilian amber This western region of Europe began to arrive through Mediterranean networks.

Baltic amber bead recovered in a Neolithic context in Cova del Frare (Matadepera, Barcelona). / CB González edited by MJ Vilar Welter.

However, until now it was thought that the Baltic amber would not have reached the peninsula before the 2nd Millennium BC, moment from which it would have become the main raw materialreplacing other ambers such as peninsular or Sicilian.

In this article, published in the magazine Nature“we present the standardized analysis of spectroscopy of infrared from an amber bead of Baltic origin found at the site of the Cova del Frare”, explains the main researcher.

“The site, undoubtedly exceptional, documents the transition between the Middle Neolithic of the ‘Pit Tombs’ and the Late Neolithic in Véraza,” says Araceli Martín Cólliga, director of the site’s excavations.

Perhaps the best amber in the world for use in jewelry is found in the Baltic area. This was highly coveted in classical Rome and currently supports an entire industry

“During Prehistory, not having written documentswe can only study human activity through archaeological remains. For studies on the transport of materials and their exchange, we have very precise analytical techniques, such as infrared spectroscopy, which provide us with a kind of fingerprint of the amber deposits and objects,” says Murillo-Barroso.

Based on a large amount of data and this type of analysis, integrated with other bodies of archaeological information, the study confirms that in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, Baltic amber arrived already during the Neolithic. According to the scientist, this “must be understood within the framework of the exchanges of that period of transition and change, whether by agents of a culture of the Grave Tombs in decline, or by those who would mark new cultural currents at the end of the Neolithic, led by the Véraza groups from Catalonia and the South of Franceand not necessarily as a direct contact with Northern Europe.”

In fact, the Baltic amber would not have crossed the Ebrosince it is not documented, for now, at such early dates in the south of the peninsula, where the use of Sicilian amber predominates as a consequence of Mediterranean networks.

In it Baltic area perhaps the best amber in the world is found for its use in jewelry. This was highly coveted in classical Rome and currently supports an entire industry, for example, in Poland. We now know that it began to arrive in Iberia no less than in the 4th millennium BC, and that, subsequently, it would progressively replace peninsular and Sicilian amber.

“This finding undoubtedly has important implications for the knowledge of the first networks of exchange of exotic materials and their involvement in social structures,” according to Marcos Martinón-Torres, professor at the University of Cambridge.

Reference:

Murillo-Barroso, M., et al. “The earliest Baltic amber in Western Europe”. Nature (2023).

Rights: Creative Commons.