The Atlantic Bronze Age in South-west Europe

Abstract

It may well seem presumptuous to attempt a fresh analysis of the Late Bronze Age in the Iberian peninsula, after the numerous contributions which the subject has received in recent years from Spanish archaeologists, and in view of the fact that the Civil War prevented the writer, when Maclver student in Iberian Archaeology, from visiting Spain at all. In fact he would not have dared to make such an analysis, if the recent output of well illustrated books and articles by Spanish archaeologists had not made study from a distance somewhat less hazardous. But the itinerary which political conditions in 1936–8 imposed on him—Portugal first, then south-western France and finally the Rhône basin—at least showed him an aspect of the Late Bronze Age in south-western Europe which is perhaps less obvious to archaeologists who look from Madrid and Barcelona with eyes trained in Central Europe. Long ago Louis Siret was impressed by the typological lacuna between the copper and bronze implements of early forms in the Iberian peninsula and those which appeared to represent the second and last phase of the local bronze industry. He drew what most archaeologists now recognize to be the right conclusion, namely, that the Early Bronze Age industry of El Argar stagnated and was replaced at a relatively late date by an industry, which had passed through the earlier stages of its development elsewhere, but soon took on a strongly local character. In his recently enunciated Esquema Paletnológico de la Peninsula Iberica Professor Santa Olalla has taken account of this new conception.

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