Description
Handmade ceramics with painted decoration constitute one of the most outstanding archaeological materials from the Late Bronze Age and the First Iron Age in the Guadalquivir and Guadiana valleys, the context in which the Tartessian culture developed. In this work, an exhaustive study of these ceramic styles has been attempted, defining their technical characteristics, dispersion, forms, decoration, symbolism, chronology, use and meaning. To this overall study are added several unpublished pieces by Alarcos, some with archeometric and content analysis, the results of which allow questioning their traditional consideration as 'post-firing ceramics'.
This characterization allows an orientation in the classification of some styles traditionally considered as a monolithic set when really, there is a much more complex panorama due to different chronological and cultural circumstances. Among the latter, the relationships and contacts established between local communities and Mediterranean populations stand out, giving rise to cultural phenomena of miscegenation or hybridization in which local tradition was combined with all exogenous contributions, a fossilized reality in these productions. This book presents the most complete and up-to-date work on these ceramics, studied from the perspective of new theoretical-methodological approaches and recent interpretations.
