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Tartessos
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Tartessos (also Tartessus) was a harbor city and its surrounding culture on the south coast of the Iberian peninsula (in modern Andalusia, Spain), at the mouth of the Guadalquivir river. It was mentioned by Herodotus, Strabo in Pliny's Natural History. and in the fourth-century Avienus's literary travel itinerary Ora Maritima, long after Tartessos had disappeared. Velleius Paterculus' date for the founding of Tartessos about eighty years after the Trojan War, before the time when the Phoenicians made contact with an existing city, has not received archaeological confirmation: the bulk of finds date from Punic occupation, after ca 500 BCE.
The Tartessians were traders, who may have discovered the route to the Tin Islands (Britain, or more specifically Cornwall) or the tin may have been found in alluvial ores carried down by their own river: the pseudonymous geographical versifier, Pseudo-Scymnus (ca 90 BCE), was surely imitating some older source when he wrote, "the renowned Tartessos, famous town, receives tin carried by the river from Celtica, as well as gold and bronze in great quantity" (Peregesis, 164, noted by Gamito).
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Tartessos (also Tartessus) was a harbor city and its surrounding culture on the south coast of the Iberian peninsula (in modern Andalusia, Spain), at the mouth of the Guadalquivir river. It was mentioned by Herodotus, Strabo in Pliny's Natural History. and in the fourth-century Avienus's literary travel itinerary Ora Maritima, long after Tartessos had disappeared. Velleius Paterculus' date for the founding of Tartessos about eighty years after the Trojan War, before the time when the Phoenicians made contact with an existing city, has not received archaeological confirmation: the bulk of finds date from Punic occupation, after ca 500 BCE.
The Tartessians were traders, who may have discovered the route to the Tin Islands (Britain, or more specifically Cornwall) or the tin may have been found in alluvial ores carried down by their own river: the pseudonymous geographical versifier, Pseudo-Scymnus (ca 90 BCE), was surely imitating some older source when he wrote, "the renowned Tartessos, famous town, receives tin carried by the river from Celtica, as well as gold and bronze in great quantity" (Peregesis, 164, noted by Gamito). Trade in tin was very lucrative from the Bronze Age onwards, since it was necessary for the production of bronze.
The people from Tartessos became important trading partners of the Phoenicians, whose presence in Iberia dates from the eighth century BCE, and who nearby built a harbor of their own, Gades (current-day Cádiz). Ancient Greek texts refer to a legendary king of Tartessos, Arganthonios, known (and presumably named) for his wealth in silver and minerals. According to Greek texts, Arganthonios lived many years beyond the normal human lifespan, but Arganthonios may have been the Greek version of a name of several Tartessian kings or their title, giving rise to legends of a single man's longevity.
"Tartessic occupation sites of the Late Bronze Age that were not particularly complex, in which a domestic mode of production seems to have predominated" is one mainstream assessment.
Lost civilization
In the 6th century BC, Tartessos disappeared rather suddenly from history. The Romans called the wide bay the Tartessius Sinus though the city as such no longer existed. One theory is that the city had been destroyed by the Carthaginians who wanted to take over the Tartessans' trading routes. Another is that it had been refounded, under obscure conditions, as Carpia. When the traveller Pausanias visited Greece in the 2nd century AD (Pausanias Description of Greece 6.XIX.3) he saw two bronze chambers in one of the sanctuaries at Olympia, which the people of Elis claimed was Tartessian bronze:
They say that Tartessus is a river in the land of the Iberians, running down into the sea by two mouths, and that between these two mouths lies a city of the same name. The river, which is the largest in Iberia, and tidal, those of a later day called Baetis, and there are some who think that Tartessus was the ancient name of Carpia, a city of the Iberians.
Flavius Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (book v.1) observes of this southernmost part of Hispania: "the promontory of Europe, known as Calpis, stretches along the inlet of the Ocean and right hand side a distance of six hundred stadia, and terminates in the ancient city of Gadeira."
The name "Carpia" possibly survives as El Carpio, a site in a bend of the Guadalquivir, but the origin of its name has been associated with its imposing oldest feature, a Moorish tower erected in 1325 by the engineer responsible for the alcázar of Seville.
The site of Tartessos has been considered irretrievably lost—buried, Schulten thought, under the shifting wetlands that have replaced former estuaries behind dunes at the modern single mouth of the Guadalquivir, where the river delta has gradually been blocked off by a huge sandbar that stretches from the mouth of the Rio Tinto, near Palos de la Frontera, to the riverbank opposite Sanlúcar de Barrameda. The area is now protected as the Parque Nacional de Doñana. (see link)
However, just 30 kilometers inland, there still is a mining city by the name of Tharsis or Tarsis, which has its roots going back to biblical times. There are excavations around this city, where ancient tools and copper was found. Copper was the main exportation from this area during antiquity. It is almost unmistakable that Tarsis is the city mentioned in the bibles, since shipbuilding in this region dates to biblical times. Please refer to Tarsis for more information.
In September 1923 archaeologists discovered a Phoenician necropolis in which human remains were unearthed and stones found with illegible characters. Tartessus was possibly Tarshish mentioned in the Old Testament. It may have been colonized by the Phoenicians for trade because of its richness in metals.
Tartessic sites and archaeology
Since the discovery in September 1958 of a rich gold treasure at El Carambolo, 3 km west of Seville, archaeological surveys have joined the previously purely philological and literary ones to provide a more informed view of Tartessic culture on the ground, concentrated in western Andalusia, Extremadura and in southern Portugal from the Algarve to the Vinalopó River in Alicante.
Alluvial tin was panned in Tartessian streams from an early date. The spread of a silver standard in Assyria by which the worth of tribute from the Phoenician cities was assessed, and the invention of coinage in the seventh century BC spurred the search for and accumulation of bronze and silver as well. Henceforth trade connections, formerly largely in elite goods, assumed an increasingly economic role. By the Late Bronze Age, silver extraction in Huelva Province reached industrial proportions. Pre-Roman silver slag has been encountered in the Tartessian cities of Huelva Province. Cypriot and Phoenician metalworkers produced an estimated 15 million tons of pyrometallurgical residues at the vast dumps of Riotinto. Mining and smelting preceded the arrival, from the eighth century onwards, of Phoenicians and then Greeks, who provided a stimulating wider market and who influence sparked an Orientalizing phase in Tartessian material culture (ca.750-550 BC) before Tartessian culture was superseded by the Classic Iberian culture.
"Tartessic" artifacts linked with the Tartessos culture have been found, and many archaeologists now associate the "lost" city with Huelva. In excavations on spatially restricted sites in the center of modern Huelva, sherds of elite painted Greek ceramics of the first half of the sixth century have been recovered. Huelva contains the largest accumulation of imported elite goods and must have been an important Tartessian center. Medellín, on the Guadiana River, revealed an important necropolis.
Elements specific to Tartessian culture are the Late Bronze Age fully-evolved pattern-burnished wares and geometrically banded and patterns "Carambolo" wares, from the ninth to the sixth centuries; an "Early Orientalizing" phase with the first Eastern imports, beginning about 750 BC; a "Late Orientalizing" phase with the finest bronzecasting and goldsmiths' work; gray ware turned on the fast potter's wheel, local imitations of imported Phoenician red-slip wares.
Characteristic Tartessian bronzes include pear-shaped jugs, often associated in burials with shallow dish-shaped braziers with loop handles, incense-burners with floral motifs, fibulas, both elbowed and double-spring types, and belt buckles.
No pre-Colonial necropolis sites have been identified. The change from a late Bronze Age pattern of circular or oval huts scattered on a village site to rectangular houses with dry stone foundations and plastered wattle walls took place during the seventh and sixth centuries BC, in settlements with planned layouts that succeeded one another on the same site. At Cástulo (Jaén), a mosaic of river pebbles from the end of the sixth century is the earliest mosaic found in Western Europe. Most sites were inexplicably abandoned in the fifth century.
Tartessian language
The Tartessian language is an extinct pre-Roman language once spoken in southern Iberia. It is seemingly unrelated to any other languages. The oldest known indigenous texts of Iberia, dated from the 7th to 6th centuries BC, are written in Tartessian. The inscriptions are written in a semi-syllabic writing system and were found in the general area in which Tartessos is supposed to have been located, also in surrounding areas of influence. Tartessian language texts have been found in parts of Southwestern Spain and Southern Portugal (namely in the Conii areas of the Algarve and southern Alentejo. This variety is often referred as Southwest script).
Traditional religious legends and religious connections
Adolf Schulten gave currency to a view of Tartessos that made it the Western, and wholly European source of the legend of Atlantis. A more serious review, by W.A. Oldfather, appeared in The American Journal of Philology. Both Atlantis and Tartessos were believed to have been advanced societies which collapsed when their cities were lost beneath the waves; supposed further similarities with the legendary society make a connection seem feasible, though virtually nothing is known of Tartessos, not even its precise site. Other Tartessian enthusiasts imagine it as a contemporary of Atlantis, with which it might have traded.
The enigmatic Lady of Elx, an ancient bust, of a high artistic quality, of a woman found in southeastern Spain, has been tied with both Atlantis and Tartessos, even though the statue displays clear signs of having been manufactured by later Iberian cultures.
In the Bible, the word Tarshish was connected to Tartessos by some early twentieth-century Classicists, though a few connect it to Tarsus in Turkey . (See further the entry for Jonah in the .) Tarshish, like Tartessos, is associated with extensive mineral wealth.
Further reading
- J. M. A. Blazquez, Tartessos y Los Origines de la Colonizacion Fenicia en Occidente (University of Salamanca) 1968. Assembles Punic materials found in Spain.
- Jaime Alvar and José María Blázquez, Los enigmas de Tartessos (Madrid:Catedra) 1993. Papers following a 1991 conference.
See also
External links
General
- Tarshish, a distant maritime district famed for its metalwork, considered by the contributors in 1901-1906 to be legendary; Old Testament references.
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Atlantis connection
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