El Argar (Antas, Almería)

Abstract

The El Argar settlement has given the most significant Bronze Age culture on the Iberian
Peninsula its name. According to the excavations carried out by the Siret brothers in the
1880s, almost 1,000 crouched burials were discovered here but the German Archaeological
Institute in Madrid did not carry out a test excavation until 1991, in order to continue with
the remarkable results from a geophysical survey.
With an excavation permit limited to trial trenches, three very small sections were laid
out on the El Argar plateau. A stone structure from Arab times (8–10th century AD), a large
amount of slag and the discovery of a puddle ball characterise a previously unknown medieval
ocupation in this form and the metalworking activities of the Arab settlers of El Argar.
The alignment of the test excavation to investigate the places established by the geophysical
survey with possible Bronze Age and now also an Arab metallurgical workshop and
activity clearly narrowed the outcome with regard to answering questions concerning the urban
organisation and development of Bronze Age El Argar. Nevertheless, the approximately 1
m strong stratigraphic sequences from the Bronze Age occupation, which were found in all
three sections and which, contrary to expectations, demonstrate the good preservation of
remains from the Bronze Age settlement, justify the venture of a test excavation and suggest
that further excavations in El Argar would probably be successful.
The pottery from the El Argar trial excavation provides a picture that is completely
consistent with the one from the contemporaneous settlement at Fuente Álamo (Cuevas del
Almanzora, Almeria) and from excavations at El Argar, made up of common ware and fine
pottery. This pottery is largely unadorned, although particularly of note are fragments decorated
with pendant triangles. Highly differentiated forms of pottery in chronological terms,
types 5, 6 and 7, appear together in older and younger forms in the more productive strata
of El Argar. Such a composition can be observed, for example, at Fuente Álamo at Horizon
III, along the lines of an El Argar B1 stage.
Perhaps the less productive strata of El Argar, which were discovered in the trial trenches,
represent only a small portion of El Argar’s clearly much longer history of settlement. Inhermanfrid
dividual fragments, which would be dated late, were found in higher locations, also in strata
from Arab times, albeit in a secondary position.
Although the faunal remains finds proportional small for the excavation area, could also
indicate a differential and advanced treatment of waste materials. The wide variety of species
and their representativeness, the age of slaughter, use and habitat resemble, in general, the
collections of other Argaric settlements although some particular features can be observed
here, relating to both hunting and also livestock production. A deep pit, where on the floor
of which lie fragments of deliberately broken vessels and, on top, parts from the skeleton
of a piglet, and of a kid, could point to a particular practice and – with all due caution – to
a sacrificial pit, and therefore be interpreted as a ritual context, something which has hardly
been considered by the studies done to argaric settlement to date of El Argar culture to date.
The discoveries of animal bones and shells at El Argar also include different artefacts,
although not in sufficiently large numbers to be able to draw conclusions regarding the activities
carried out in this Bronze Age settlement area.
Four recent C-14 datings from the animal bones out of trench 1 and the pit in trench 3
provide confirmation for the chronological classification of the Bronze Age context.