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-Dibujo de las caras frontal y dorsal de la estatua-menhir del Pla de les Pruneres (Aida Alarcos). Figura 4.-Fotografía completa de la estatua-menhir del Pla de les Pruneres.
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At the site of the Pla de les Pruneres has been found an anthropomorphic figure carved in three dimensions
on a block of arkose of 4.90 meters high and 6200 kg weight. The similarities of this statue-menhir
with the figures of the Rouergue and the French Languedoc are very interesting, a fact which leads us to
propose a timeline for this figure of...
Citations
... A la zona del Vallès, on també s'han trobat altres exemples d'estatuària megalítica, hem d'apuntar que tant la figura de ca l'Estrada, a Canovelles (Fortó et al. 2005i 2008, com la figura del pla de les Pruneres, a Mollet del Vallès (Martínez 2011), corresponen a unes cronologies més avançades que no pas aquesta de Llanera, i per tant resulten més complexes. No obstant, en un laboriós treball presentat a la revista Cypsela hem presentat una figura antropomorfa femenina identificada en l'estela de la sitja del Llop (Montseny), on podem apreciar que el cap es troba representat amb 3 cercles concèntrics que no són del tot circulars. ...
... Per una altra banda sabem que les cronologies que donen els investigadors francesos a les estàtues del grup de la Rouergue estan entre el 3300 i 2200 aC, per relació amb el grup de Treilles (d'Anna 2002, Maillé 2010. Nosaltres hem valorat la similitud d'alguns elements de les figures de ca l'Estrada ) i del pla de les Pruneres (Martínez 2011) amb les figures rouergades, fet que ens ha portat a atorgar-los la mateixa cronologia. D'aquesta manera sabem que tant al Solsonès com al Vallès, en cronologies de finals del IV millenni aC, podem tenir ja una estatuària megalítica desenvolupada i rica en decoracions. ...
... Resulta molt delicat abordar aquest tema, ja que poques vegades hi ha dades arqueològiques que s'hi puguin relacionar de forma directa, i altres vegades hem fet propostes justificades per parallels etnogràfics. D'aquesta manera ens remetem als darrers treballs que hem fet (Moya et al. 2010, Martínez 2011), on ja hem tractat aquest tema amb profusió, i aquí farem només alguns comentaris. ...
In the northeast of the province of Granada, in the Guadix-Baza depression, we find the megalithic necropolis of the Gor river valley, one of the largest megalithic complexes in Europe. At the time of its discovery in the 19th century, the Belgian engineer Louis Siret identified 238 graves, although it has now only been possible to locate 151 due to problems of erosion and anthropic activities. The articulation around the Gor River, the obvious visual connection with various geographical landmarks and with passageways and the high density of distribution of the megaliths invite us to think of a direct relationship with the territory, which in fact has already become evident even in the legal field, since these necropolises were protected in 2017 as an Asset of Cultural Interest under the denomination of "Megalithic Landscape of the Gor River Valley".
During of the first investigations, Louis Siret and Pedro Flores, the first excavators in the area, identified 238 graves and excavated 103, finding human remains of at least 760 inhumed individuals (Siret, 2001). Among the numerous grave goods found were not only elements from the Late Neolithic and Copper Age, but also Bronze Age, Protohistoric, Roman and Medieval materials, which suggests a succession of reuses throughout History. Later, Georg and Vera Leisner also carried out several campaigns in the area, documenting, drawing and photographing 84 of the megaliths already located (Leisner and Leisner, 1943). Unfortunately, problems in the correlation of the drawings and descriptions and the existence of various nomenclatures and numberings for the tombs make it impossible to relate the information from these first campaigns with the current reality, so the publication that serves as a reference for the location of the tombs is the one created by Manuel García Sánchez and Jean Christian Spahni in 1959 (García Sánchez and Spahni, 1959). These researchers had already noted the impossibility of correlating the megaliths and gave them a new numbering that is still used today. They are also responsible for the differentiation of the megaliths into 11 necropolises, which are:
-Baños de Alicún (Villanueva de las Torres)
-La Sabina (Gorafe and Guadix)
-Las Majadillas (Gorafe and Guadix)
-Llano de la Cuesta de Guadix (Guadix)
-Llano de Olivares (Gorafe)
-Hoyas del Conquín (Gorafe)
-Cerrillo de las Liebres (Guadix and Gor)
-La Gabiarra (Gor)
-Llano de Carrascosa (Gor)
-La Torrecilla (Gor)
-El Baúl (Baza)
However, this classification was carried out subjectively, taking into account mainly the toponymy of the territory and not on the basis of any archaeological, chronological or formal criteria. In this way, there exists necropolises in which very different megaliths are grouped together and, in other cases, megaliths with similar characteristics are grouped together in different necropolises. As an initial approach to the necropolises studied on a macro scale, taking into account the articulation of the megaliths within and between them, as well as their relationship with the geomorphological environment, a regrouping of the tombs has been carried out according to spatial statistics. To this end, the Ripley, Translate and Poisson pair correlation methods were applied to the 151 documented megaliths, based on the variables of location (X_UTM, Y_UTM), altitude above sea level and distance in metres from the Gor river. This first classification finds great differences between some of the groups traditionally referred to and, sometimes, within them, considering megaliths 165 and 166 as atypical cases that should be classified outside the necropolis with which they have been associated (Llano del Cerrillo de las Liebres) and establishing that the necropolis of Baños de Alicún and El Baúl appear too far from the river Gor to be considered to be organised around it. In the case of Baños de Alicún there are other differences in altitude, lower by almost 100 m.a.s.l. than the rest of the megaliths on average, as well as other particularities linked to the monumentality of the complex and its proximity to the river Fardes. On the other hand, there are no statistically significant differences for their differentiation in the case of the Llano del Cerrillo de las Liebres, Llano de Carrascosa and La Gabiarra necropolises, so that these three groups can be simplified from a spatial point of view into a single group, although it should be borne in mind that these are the areas where the most tombs have disappeared (or have not been found) since the first archaeological investigations. Once this first approximation had been made, the Elbow and Silhouette methods were applied to establish the optimum number of necropolises according to the intra- and inter-group differences and similarities identified in the first section, subsequently classified by means of the K-means algorithm. The result is that the traditional division into 11 necropolises does not make sense according to spatial statistical criteria, finding that a division into 8 groups organised according to the aforementioned differences and similarities would be the most appropriate (Esquivel et al., 2022). These groups would be Baños de Alicún, La Sabina, Majadillas-Llano de la Cuesta de Guadix, Llano de Olivares-Llano de la Cuesta de Guadix, Hoyas del Conquín-Llano del Cerrillo de las Liebres-Gabiarra-Llano de Carrascosa, La Torrecilla, el Baúl and, independently, dolmens 165 and 166.
In order to analyse the relationship between the megaliths individually and between the necropolises to assess the groupings, a series of visibility analyses have been carried out, among which we can highlight the intervisibility analysis due to its interesting results. This analysis calculates whether a point is visible from another determined point according to the elevations of a DTM, also known as line of visibility. The study has been carried out in two different ways, on the one hand, by relating the total number of megaliths to each other and, on the other hand, by relating the known settlements in the area and the megaliths. The analyses of intervisibility between the settlements and the megaliths show a network that connects both types of sites, with the case of the Hoyas del Conquín-Llano de Olivares area being particularly noteworthy, where the presence of the Solana I and El Cotillo enclaves in the centre of the megalithic area creates a kind of almost closed geometric figure in the settlements through the visual relationships, which makes clear the search for a specific spatial distribution related to the control of the territory. Equally interesting is the network created around the settlements of Fuentecilla I and II and the megaliths of La Sabina, Majadillas and even some of the Llano de Olivares if we consider a radius of 5 km. In the case of the analysis of intervisibility between the megaliths, we find that a single intervisibility network is created that connects most of the megaliths, at least those that appear in the central necropolis. This is already evident at a radius of 3 km, although if the radius is extended to 5 km, the intervisibility is even greater, even linking groups that are in principle far apart. The non-existence of boundaries within the total assemblage, evidenced by this study, had already been hypothesised in other publications which, on the other hand, had been preliminary in nature as they did not consider the total number of burials (Spanedda et al., 2014). It should be noted that this degree of interconnection has not been identified for other areas of the Iberian Peninsula, where it has only been found that some megaliths are intervisible with each other, but in a much smaller number, as intervisibility is privileged with respect to other elements of the landscape and not with respect to the other burial mounds. In the case of the marginal necropolises, mainly Baños de Alicún (to the north of the valley, in the municipality of Villanueva de las Torres), this visual differentiation with respect to the main groups had already been inferred in other spatial and constructive analyses, in which these megaliths were characterised by a greater distance from the river Gor, by some specific topographical aspects and even by a series of differentiated constructive characteristics (Cabrero et al., 2021; Esquivel et al., 2021). These questions lead us to think about the differentiation of these groups according to possible differences between communities which, moreover, would be located around different hydrographic basins, as the study of the redistribution of the megaliths has pointed out. All these questions lead us to consider the concept of necropolis and to critically review what can be considered as a megalithic environment in the Gor valley itself, as well as the identifying characteristics of the manifestations of the megalithic phenomenon in this area.
REFERENCES:
Cabrero, C., Bueno, J.A., Esquivel, F.J., y Garrido, A. (2021). Una revisión del megalitismo del valle del río Gor desde los GIS y el análisis estadístico. Nuevos datos y nuevas preguntas. Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología de la Universidad de Granada, 31, 75-94.
Esquivel, F.J., Cabrero, C., Cámara, J.A. y Esquivel, J.A. (2021). Statistical analysis on metric and geometric features of dolmens in the Gor river megalithic landscape (Granada, Andalusia, Spain). Archaeometry, 64(4), 815-832.
García Sánchez, M. y Spahni, J.-C. (1959). Sepulcros megalíticos de la región de Gorafe (Granada). Archivo de Prehistoria levantina, 8, 43-114.
Leisner, G. y Leisner, V. (1943): Die Megalithgräber der Iberischen Halbinsel. Der Süden. Berlín: Verlag von Walter de Gruyter & Co.
Siret, L. (2001): España prehistórica.1891-2001. Sevilla: Junta de Andalucía.
Spanedda, L., Afonso, J.A., Cámara, J.A., Molina, F., Montufo, A.M., Pau, C. y Haro, M. (2014). Tomb location and grave goods: continuous use and destruction in the río de Gor megalithic necropolis. En B. Schulz y B. Gaydarska. (Eds.), Neolithic and Copper Age monuments. Emergence, function and the social construction of the landscape (pp. 107-124). Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, International Series 2625.
El arte rupestre del noroeste peninsular es una importante manifestación cultural prehistórica, que presenta como uno de sus mayores retos de investigación la indefinición cronológica. De esta generalizada situación se pueden excluir algunas representaciones de armas o ídolos, las cuales son escasas, pero encuentran correlato directo en el registro arqueológico. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es dar a conocer nuevas estaciones con figuras idoliformes en el noroeste peninsular. Los hallazgos presentados aquí son una nueva estación con un motivo tipo “Peña Tú”, dos estaciones con representaciones de Ídolos cilindro, y un posible ídolo placa. Estos nuevos grupos resultan de gran interés, ya que vienen a engrosar la nómina de este tipo de motivos (particularmente escasos) en el arte del noroeste y permite discutir ciertos aspectos sobre la cronología de ese ciclo artístico. La presencia de estas figuras es especialmente ilustrativa, pues reproduce un tipo de iconografía característica de otras regiones peninsulares, pero adaptadas a las técnicas y pautas de representación propias del Arte Rupestre Atlántico. Además, da cuenta de la extensa red de contactos, a lo largo de la península ibérica y Europa, dónde no solo se intercambian elementos materiales, sino también fluyen conceptos de tipo cultural.
Este estudio analiza una piedra con grabados localizada en el yacimiento ibérico de Les Maleses durante la campaña del 2015. A través de uno de los grabados que se identifica con un puñal podemos establecer la cronología de la misma y la funcionalidad que desempeñaba, poco frecuente, por otro lado, en los contextos íberos contemporáneos. Abstract This study analyzes an engraved stone located in the Les Maleses Iberian site during the 2015 campaign .A dagger. can be easily identified in it. Thanks to that engraving, we can pinpoint the chronology of the whole set and make a good guess at its function.Such a kind of engraved stone is seldom found in contemporary Iberian contexts.
With the finds of the statue menhirs at Ca l’Estrada (2004), Pla de les Pruneres (2009) and the sculptures at Reguers de Seró (2007), Catalan Megalithism is contributing the latest and most important new developments in the European phenomenon of Final Neolithic anthropomorphic statuary. Catalonia is now at the forefront of research on the Megalithic art produced between the late 4th and the 3rd millenniums. Although Catalan anthropomorphic representations have been shown to have a character of their own, they share features and links with other nearby figurative groups, including those in Rouergue and Languedoc.
À travers les découvertes des statues-menhirs de ca l’Estrada (2004), de Pla de les Pruneres (2009) et de l’ensemble de sculptures des Reguers de Seró (2007), le mégalithisme catalan apporte les nouveautés les plus récentes et les plus significatives pour ce qui est du phénomène européen de la pratique statuaire anthropomorphe du néolithique final. C’est ainsi que la Catalogne se place à la première ligne de la recherche sur l’art mégalithique produit entre la fin du 4ème millénaire et le 3ème millénaire. Les représentations anthropomorphes catalanes se présentent comme des manifestations à caractère propre et singulier, qui toutefois, partagent des traits et des liens avec d’autres groupes figuratifs proches, comme celui du Rouergue ou celui du Languedoc.
