Content uploaded by Antonio Blanco-González
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Antonio Blanco-González on May 17, 2018
Content may be subject to copyright.
Considering Creativity
Creativity, Knowledge and Practice
in Bronze Age Europe
Edited by
Joanna Sofaer
Archaeopress Archaeology
Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Summertown Pavilion
18-24 Middle Way
Summertown
Oxford OX2 7LG
www.archaeopress.com
ISBN 978 1 78491 754 8
ISBN 978 1 78491 755 5 (e-Pdf)
© Archaeopress and the individual authors 2018
Front cover: A passementerie bula from Sviloš, Serbia (Archaeological Museum in Zagreb) and Bronze
Age textiles from Hallstatt, Austria, (Natural History Museum, Vienna). Back cover: Axe made for the
BOAT 1550 BC project (A. Lehoërff)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.
Printed in England by Oxuniprint, Oxford
This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com
i
Contents
List of Figures �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������iii
Notes on Contributors ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������vii
Introduction �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1
Joanna Sofaer
1� Creativity and Knowledge ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5
Bengt Molander
2� Copying from Sherds� Creativity in Bronze Age Pottery in Central Iberia (1800-1150 BC) ��������19
Antonio Blanco-González
3� Creativity versus Taboo in Late Bronze Age Central and Southeast Europe �������������������������������39
Carola Metzner-Nebelsick
4� Dull Hues versus Colour and Glamour� Creative Textile Design in the 2nd Millennium BC in
Central Europe ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������55
Karina Grömer and Regina Hofmann-de Keijzer
5� The Imaginary Crested Helmet of Vercingétorix: What is ‘Creativity’ in Bronze Age Metal
Production? ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������67
Anne Lehoërff
6� Creativity and the Making of a Pottery Decoration Style in Middle Bronze Age Transylvania:
The Building of a Theory of Movement �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������83
Nona Palincaş
7� The Nordic Razor as a Medium of Creativity ����������������������������������������������������������������������������105
Flemming Kaul
8� In the Beginning was the Fibre ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������117
Antoinette Rast-Eicher
9� Towards Textile Textures ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������133
Lise Bender Jørgensen
10� The Appearance of Fibulae in the Late Bronze Age� Creativity in the Crafting of the First
Clothes Fasteners in the South of the Carpathian Basin ��������������������������������������������������������143
Daria Ložnjak Dizdar
11� Creative Elaboration in Clay in the Early Bronze Age in the Carpathian Region ��������������������151
Jozef Bátora
2� Copying from Sherds� Creativity in Bronze Age Pottery
in Central Iberia (1800-1150 BC)
Antonio Blanco-González
In first instance, and almost intuitively, the word ‘creativity’ may suggest a certain array of ideas that
belong to disciplines such as anthropology, sociology or psychology. Some of these concepts very
likely have to do with its cognitive foundations (Boden 1998). Thus, creativity may instantly recall
proactive thought, innovative dynamism and intentional performance aimed at breaking traditions
and conventions. This is especially true in relation to recent and very influential theorisations in the
anthropology of art, where not only artists are considered as social agents, but other entities - including
things - can also motivate responses as vehicles of ‘secondary’ agency (Gell 1998, 16-27). However, such a
concept of creativity as imaginative innovation opposed to conveying traditions may be of limited value
for archaeologists (Mithen 1998, 2-5).
I would like to contend here that such a perspective is ill-equipped to tackle the prehistoric evidence.
In this regard, a series of flaws can be claimed. First, this is a too biased human-centred approach,
within which ‘human’ exclusively means a limited Western contemporary subset of individuals (Mithen
1998, 5). This point of view strikingly diverges from the current emphasis on the necessity for more
integral, mutualistic and comprehensive accounts that seriously consider things in themselves and their
disregarded materiality (e.g. Olsen 2010; Hodder 2012; Jones 2012; Lucas 2012). Thus, individual creativity
in prehistory may be dealt with from a more emic-oriented approach; one which aims to encompass the
otherness of the past and allows for counteracting our own contingent tenets (Lohnmann 2010, 222-225).
Secondly, in order to examine innovation, we need a wider consideration of the external socio-economic
framework which restricts as well as promotes it (Torrence and van der Leeuw 1989, 6) instead of the
study of disconnected novelties. Third, synchronic and static analyses seem inappropriate to deal with
prehistoric creativity. Rather, a comparative approach is needed to assess the actual rates of originality
and the relative frequencies of similarity and difference in past craftworks (Hosfield 2009, 56). Finally,
this task requires addressing not only the inception of a creative expression, but especially its resilience
and endurance. The latter attributes may be measured in terms of their appropriateness within any
particular human-thing entanglements (Hodder 2012, 111-137), that is, its iterative performance (Jones
2012, 19-22) and subsequent traceability in the material record (Kuhn and Stiner 1998, 144).
All in all, the above caveats warn us against any kind of simplistic and non-critical appraisal of what
should be considered creative, and what should not, in any prehistoric context. Therefore, from an
archaeological perspective, it is far more compelling to tackle this tricky topic searching the material
record from: a) a more symmetrical perspective, integrating materiality and sociality (Olsen 2010;
Hodder 2012); b) an approach that considers both the channelling constrictions and the potentialities for
innovations (Layton 2003, contra Gell 1998); and c) a more balanced understanding of the relative rates of
stasis and change, assessing each innovation against its inherited background in a long-term perspective.
The proposed task faces special difficulties regarding the last two points: how to deal with habitual
patterns and their duration? Some of the more conspicuous features in the archaeological record are
precisely those related to continuity (Hodder 1998, 64-68); gradualism in the slow pace of material
change, routinisation and received know-how in the realm of everyday social practice, and conservatism
in the logic of cultural behaviour. These apparent trends may certainly hinder the recognition of any
creative efforts. However, these images of homogeneity and stability may be deceiving as they depend on
a very restricted set of observed dimensions (Kuhn and Stiner 1998, 147; Hodder 2012, 146). Furthermore,
even the more successful trajectories of endurance - seemingly lacking any improvements - are actually
driven by some kind of strategic or directional, although non-teleological, social action (Hodder 2012,
Considering Creativity
167-171). It is necessary to acknowledge that ‘the continuity of tradition is due not to its passive inertia,
but to its active regeneration – in the tasks of carrying on’ from precedent forms (Ingold and Hallam
2007, 6, italicised in the original). From this relational position, the enduring practices and the rupture
of tradition are not opposed clear-cut categories (Ingold 2000, 147; Lohnmann 2010, 225-228). Thus,
the maintenance of customary ways of doing things should be understood as the outcome of dynamic
processes of adaptation or fitting together (Hodder 1998, 65, 2012, 139).
Inspired by the above contributions, this piece of work examines Middle and Late Bronze Age pottery
in Central Iberia (1800-1150 BC) also known as Cogotas I style (Castro et al. 1995; Harrison 1994, 1995;
Abarquero 2005; Rodríguez Marcos 2007; Abarquero et al. 2013) (Figure 2.1). This cultural expression is
usually divided into two phases: an early phase ascribed to the Middle Bronze Age (1800-1450 BC) and a Late
Bronze Age period (1450-1150 BC) (Blasco 2012, 192-196; Esparza et al. 2012). Thus, this case study covers
nearly seven centuries of a hand-made pottery tradition punctuated by the introduction and successful
deployment of consecutive ornamental choices. In this essay attention is paid to these nuanced shifts in the
surface decoration of Cogotas I vessels throughout their currency. Archaeology usually relies upon pottery
decorations to address chrono-typological concerns, but ceramic ornamentation hardly ever receives
explicit reflection as a social practice (Robb and Michelaki 2012, 164). As it is widely acknowledged, the
Figure 2.1. The Iberian Peninsula and the area of the Cogotas I culture (1800-1150 cal BC). Sites mentioned in the text: 1. Molino
Sanchón II (Villafáfila, Zamora); 2. La Horra (El Cerro, Burgos); 3. El Mirador cave (Atapuerca, Burgos); 4. Cueva Maja (Cabrejas del
Pinar, Soria); 5. Cueva del Asno (Los Rábanos, Soria); 6. Castilviejo de Yuba (Medinaceli, Soria); 7. Majaladares (Borja, Zaragoza);
8. Cova dels Encantats (Serinyá, Girona); 9. Boquique cave (Plasencia, Cáceres); 10. Cerro de la Cabeza (Ávila); 11. Las Cogotas
(Cardeñosa, Ávila); 12. Madrid; 13. Las Carolinas (Madrid); 14. La Indiana (Pinto, Madrid); 15. Llanete de los Moros (Montoro,
Córdoba); 16. Peñalosa (Baños de la Encina, Jaén): 17. Cuesta del Negro (Purullena, Granada); 18. Gatas (Turre, Almería); 19.
Cabezo Redondo (Villena, Alicante)
21
more conspicuous aspects of pottery such as external decoration constitutes a very limited dimension of
its technological variability, not necessarily relevant in symbolic or utilitarian terms for past craftspeople
or users (e.g. Dietler and Herbich 1989, 157-158; Holsfield 2009, 52). Nonetheless, sometimes this might
have been the case, and the Iberian evidence offers good reasons to argue for the significance of Cogotas I
decorations in terms of identity and social cohesion among those Bronze Age peoples.
In particular, out of the array of relative changes in ornamental traits throughout the Cogotas I pottery
tradition, this essay focuses on one particular kind of creative choices: those which, rather than emerging
‘out of the blue’, may be compared with independent spatio-temporal ceramic assemblages due to the
close formal analogies noticed between them. To date these striking resemblances have been understood
through under-theorised and misleading scholarly notions, including ethno-cultural affiliation or
evolutionary genealogy. Yet the examination of the creative process behind such particular cases
constitutes a great opportunity to shed some light upon the social practices and cultural tenets involved
in decorating Cogotas I vessels. Thus, this contribution deals with what Hodder (1998, 62-68) called
interpretive or associational creativity; a socially embedded process of understanding and performing
in particular circumstances, fitting improvisations into received and formalised ways of doing things.
Creativity is here tackled from the manifold inspirational streams used in contextually specific ways by
these Bronze Age craftspeople. A diachronic approach, which reaches back to the Early Neolithic, allows
investigation of a selective set of creative traits adopted by those potters, probably drawing on distant
or extinct themes or techniques. This paper aims at broadening the understanding of such decorative
choices within contingent Bronze Age creative frameworks (Torrence and van der Leeuw 1989, 6). Thus,
the deployment of these salient ceramic ornaments will be explored as transient responses made by
Bronze Age potters as part of their social strategies.
An Old Problem: Disconnected Ceramic Resemblances
The definition of the Cogotas I culture as the main Bronze Age tradition in inland Iberia is due
to the studies of Juan Cabré in the late 1920s, who named it after the lower layer found in his
excavations at Las Cogotas hillfort (Cardeñosa, Ávila) (Ruiz Zapatero and Álvarez-Sanchís 1995).
Beneath the massive remains of the Late Iron Age occupation (350-50 BC) he managed to identify
some scarce and scattered ceramics, which he correctly dated to the later Bronze Age. However,
after his death, and for several decades following, many archaeologists mistakenly ascribed these
materials to the Early Iron Age (e.g. Almagro Basch 1939; Maluquer de Motes 1956). Up to the mid-
1970s the disciplinary mainstream in Iberian archaeology was based upon deep-rooted empiricist
and diffusionist assumptions (see Martínez Navarrete 1989). Practitioners of this culture-historical
strand very often based their interpretive accounts on inaccurate sequences or erroneous cultural
classifications. One such source of confusion during the 1920s and the 1930s was the striking
similarity between local Bell-Beaker and Cogotas I ceramics, but also between Iberian and central
European wares (e.g. Almagro Basch 1939, 143-144). These formal analogies did not pass unnoticed
by subsequent scholars working on later prehistoric Iberia. Among these researchers, Maluquer de
Motes (1956) subsumed such resemblances into an influential overview of the cultural dynamics of
the Cogotas I pottery tradition. Thus, following the intellectual climate in Spain during that time (the
Francoist dictatorship, 1939-1975), he straightforwardly linked ceramic features with prehistoric
peoples in terms of autochthonous / invasionist influences (Maluquer de Motes 1956; Fernández-
Posse 1998, 11-24).
The modern and correct definition of Cogotas I as a Bronze Age culture was only achieved during
the early 1980s after the implementation of radiocarbon dating (e.g. Fernández-Posse 1982; Delibes
1983; Jimeno 1984). From this time onwards it was recognized that decorative choices cannot be
simplistically related to demographic movements and, by contrast, endogenous processes began to be
stressed (Fernández-Posse 1982, 141-147). The tricky genealogy of the Cogotas I pottery style has since
the 1980s been only sporadically and tangentially touched (e.g. Castro et al. 1995, 51-60; Blasco 2002-
2003; Abarquero 2005, 24-26, 2012, 98-101; Rodríguez Marcos 2007, 357-367). Doing so, authors have
2� Copying from Sherds
Considering Creativity
22
drawn again upon the apparent resemblances between ceramic assemblages that are temporally and
spatially unrelated. Nonetheless, there has been no serious attempt to offer any inclusive and sound
proposal to account for such similarities. In short, no real advances can be singled out in this problem,
probably regarded by some scholars as highly speculative, or even worse, as irrelevant. This essay is
aimed at shedding fresh light on this topic from an alternative perspective. It focuses on the creativity
of Bronze Age potters and draws on recent theoretically-informed frameworks.
The remainder of this section is devoted to the description of some of the outstanding formal analogies
between Cogotas I wares and previous or exogenous ceramic repertoires. I will pay special attention
to three particular examples. The first of these has the greatest temporal depth as it involves Early
Neolithic and Late Bronze Age pottery. This example is the most problematic since the possibility of direct
transmission of crafts is very unlikely and therefore it better encapsulates the disconnection between
Bronze Age and precedent potters. Second, the multiple similarities traced between Bell-Beaker and
Cogotas I decorative traits will be addressed. This example has received most attention in the literature,
and there is a growing consensus on the validity of the links noticed between these assemblages. The
section finishes with the possible creative association between extra-peninsular Middle Bronze Age and
local Late Bronze Age excised ceramics.
The example of the Boquique, a stab-and-drag technique
The pottery technique locally known as Boquique - named after the Boquique Cave (Cáceres) where it
was discovered for the first time (Figure 2.1) - consists of a stab-and-drag decoration. This was executed
by dragging a pointed object across the soft unfired wall of a vessel while punching the tip into the
vessel surface at regular intervals (Maluquer de Motes 1956; Fernández-Posse 1982; Alday 2009; Alday
and Moral 2011). The result is an incised groove with rhythmic punctuations within it (Figure 2.2). This
is an effective technique to get contrasting light-shadow visual effects on ceramic surfaces. There are
similar impressed techniques throughout Europe, such as the sillon d´impression executed by Cardial
communities in the Mediterranean basin during the mid-sixth millennium BC (Manen 2007, 146-147) or
some stab-and-drag decorations in the British Woodhenge or Durrington Walls sub-style within Grooved
Ware in the third millennium BC (Wainwright and Longworth 1971).
Several Iberian scholars have referred to stab-and-drag designs in both Bell-Beaker and Bronze Age
ceramics (Maluquer de Motes 1956, 180, 196; Fernández-Posse 1982, 137), although these have not always
been correctly appraised. In the 1980s it was finally realized that the sherds retrieved at the Boquique
Cave should be dated to the Middle-Late Neolithic (4400-3300 BC), and that the same technique was also
widely used in the Late Bronze Age (Fernández-Posse 1982, 147-149). Thus, nowadays it is possible to
track this technique in inland Iberia at different moments throughout later prehistory (Alday and Moral
2011, 67). The earliest stab-and-drag motifs (Figure 2.2, 1) are, in fact, older than was initially thought
(Fernández-Posse 1982); they actually date to the Early Neolithic (5500-4400 BC), contemporary to the
Mediterranean Cardial impressed wares (Alday 2009, 135-137). There are also a few sporadic examples
of stab-and-drag motifs among Bell-Beaker pottery (2600-2000 BC), such as the Ciempozuelos-style bowl
from Las Carolinas (Madrid) (Figure 2.2, 2a) featuring so-called ‘symbolic’ schematic stags drawn by
using this technique (Blasco and Baena 1996, 431, Lám. II; Garrido Pena 2000, 108). It is also possible to
recognize this technique in a large Beaker from Molino Sanchón II (Zamora) (Abarquero et al. 2012, 206,
fig. 190; Guerra-Doce et al. 2011, 812) (Figure 2.2, 2b) and there are other possible cases (e.g. Montero and
Rodríguez 2008, 166, Lám. IX). Finally, the widespread use of this technique occurred in the Late Bronze
Age (Figure 2.2, 3a & 3b) from c.1450 BC (e.g. Rodríguez Marcos 2007, 362-364; Abarquero 2005).
Analogies between Bell-Beaker and Bronze Age wares
Several Bell-Beaker styles can be discerned in the Iberian Meseta (e.g. Harrison 1977, 55-67; Garrido Pena
2000; 2014). In this subsection attention will be drawn primarily to the most frequent of these variants, the
Ciempozuelos style, although more localised similarities can be recognised between the Beaker impressed-
2� Copying from Sherds
Figure 2.2. 1a and b) Early Neolithic stab-and-drag examples from El Mirador (Burgos) and from 1c) Atxoste (Álava) (photos:
A. Alday); 2a) Ciempozuelos Beaker bowl from Las Carolinas (Madrid) (photo: Museo Arqueológico Regional de Madrid); 2b)
Beaker from Molino Sanchón II (Villafáfila, Zamora) (photo: A. Blanco González); 3a) Late Bronze Age vessel from Madrid (Museo
Municipal de Madrid); 3b) Late Bronze Age vessel from Cerro de la Cabeza (photo: A. Blanco González).
comb style and some early Cogotas I pottery. The Ciempozuelos ware (Delibes 1977; Harrison 1977, 19-
20; Blasco 1994; Garrido Pena 2000, 116-126; Rodríguez Marcos 2007, 252-256) was widespread throughout
the Meseta between 2600-2000 BC, in the same region subsequently occupied by Cogotas I communities
(1800-1150 BC) (Fernández-Posse 1998; Abarquero 2005) (Figure 2.1). There is a wide array of resemblances
between both pottery assemblages, a point that has been highlighted since the 1920s (e.g. Almagro Basch
2� Copying from Sherds
Considering Creativity
1939, 143-144; Maluquer de Motes 1956, 196; Harrison 1977, 20; Jimeno 1984, 117-118). The key ornamental
traits that define the Ciempozuelos style are also reproduced among Cogotas I ware and are the following:
a) Widespread deployment among the early Cogotas I pottery of the more ubiquitous incised motifs in
the Ciempozuelos style: herringbones, spikes and reticulates (Garrido Pena 2000, 119-120, fig. 48, themes
6 and 9; Rodríguez Marcos 2012, 155). During the Middle Bronze Age other less frequent themes are also
similar to Bell-Beaker decorations, such as incised triangles filled with lines. Late Bronze Age wares feature
the so-called ‘pseudo-Kerbschnitt’ (Rodríguez Marcos 2007, 369) which has striking precedents among
Ciempozuelos ware (Harrison 1977, 20; Garrido Pena 2000, 120, fig. 48, theme 12) (Figure 2.3, 1a & 1b).
Figure 2.3. 1a) Encrusted Beaker carinated bowls with pseudo-excised motifs from La Salmedina (Madrid) (photo: Museo
Arqueológico Regional de Madrid) and 1b) from Cuesta de la Reina (Ciempozuelos, Madrid) (photo: Real Academia de la
Historia); 2) Late Bronze Age jar featuring checkerboard excised motives with white paste from Pórragos (Bolaños, Valladolid)
(photo: Museo de Valladolid).
2� Copying from Sherds
b) The extensive use of internal rim decoration, almost always deploying chevron motifs. This is ‘a
Ciempozuelos leitmotiv’ (Harrison 1977, 20) in the Northern Meseta, where between 30% - 50% of all rims
exhibit such a feature (Delibes 1977; Garrido Pena 2000, 163). The decoration of internal rims is even
more widespread among Cogotas I vessels (Jimeno 1984; Rodríguez Marcos 2012, 158) (Figure 2.3, 1a).
c) White paste rubbed into the geometric decorations (Delibes 1977; Harrison 1977, 20; Jimeno 1984).
Maluquer de Motes (1956, 186) in fact regarded excised and stab-and-drag techniques not as decorations
per se, but as a way of anchoring encrusted inlays. He also reported that the bulk of rims in Cogotas I
vessels exhibit white accretions (Maluquer de Motes 1956, 192) (Figure 2.3).
Figure 2.4. 1-2) Duffaits sherds in Middle Bronze Age cave contexts (photos: S. Moral and Museo Numantino); 3) Late Bronze
Age excised vessel from Madrid (Museo Municipal de Madrid).
2� Copying from Sherds
Considering Creativity
26
In addition, several authors agree on the likeness between the Bell-Beaker impressed-comb style and
certain Cogotas I local pottery variants corresponding to its earliest phase (1800-1450 BC) (Garrido Pena
2000, 113-116). This is particularly striking for one micro-style from the western Meseta region, whose
ceramics feature numerous impressed-comb motives (e.g. Fabián 2012; Rodríguez Marcos 2012, 158).
Late Bronze Age excision and Duffaits excised ceramics in Central Iberia
The last example is the excised technique, which consists of the removal of clay from the surface of
unfired vessels to create geometric motifs (Figure 2.4). This cultural choice was widely replicated by
potters in inland Iberia during the Late Bronze Age (1450-1150 BC). Red, or more often white, inlays were
sometimes put into the voids of such decorative motifs (Delibes 1983; Blasco 2002-2003, 2012; Abarquero
2005) (Figure 2.3, 2). Until the late 1970s this ornamental trait was regarded as a genuine index fossil
leading to discussion of ethno-cultural genesis. Thus, it was related to the Kerbschnitt technique, and
linked to waves of immigrants from central Europe (e.g. Maluquer de Motes 1956). By contrast, other
authors highlighted certain local Ciempozuelos designs as ‘pseudo-excision’ or ‘pseudo-Kerbschnitt’
(Figure 2.3, 1) to reconsider its vernacular roots (e.g. Almagro Basch 1939, 143-144; Molina and Arteaga
1976, 176; Harrison 1977, 20). Two points need to be made in relation to these arguments. First, the
opinions against a hypothetical link with other trans-Pyrenees Bronze Age cultures (e.g. Fernández-
Posse 1982, 145-146) are now out-of-date and require further discussion. Second, the alleged Bell-Beaker
precedents are simply deep impressions, which ‘gives the appearance of chip-carving, without actually
being so’ (Harrison 1977, 20); this is a completely different technical procedure to the Cogotas I excisions
(Rodríguez Marcos 2007, 371).
In actual fact, in Iberia there is a noteworthy set of early chip-carved ceramics in Middle Bronze Age contexts,
such as several bottle sherds from Cabezo Redondo (Alicante) or a carinated handled bowl from Cova dels
Encantats (Girona) (Delibes et al. 2000, 106-115). Despite the lack of archaeometric verification, they were
most probably imported from the French Aquitanian region. Several archaeologists have successfully
tracked a handful of those seemingly Duffaits wares which reached Central Iberia before the mid-second
millennium BC (e.g. Delibes et al. 2000; Moral et al. 2003-2004; Rodríguez Marcos 2007, 371-372). Significantly,
despite the large amount of excavated open-air sites dated to the Middle Bronze Age in the Meseta, these
materials only appear in caves in the eastern Meseta: El Mirador (Burgos), Cueva del Asno (Soria), Cueva
Maja (Soria) and Castilviejo de Yuba (Soria). The latter is an old, decontextualised find (Delibes et al. 2000,
114) whereas Cueva Maja is a transitional Early-Middle Bronze Age context dated to 2200-1940 BC, the
oldest site known in the Meseta where Duffaits materials have been found to date (Samaniego et al. 2001,
58, fig. 91). In a 6m2 excavation at El Mirador cave (Vergés et al. 2002) up to five Duffaits potsherds (Figure
2.4, 1) were retrieved (Moral et al. 2003-2004, 66-68, fig. 4). One such item was discovered in layer MIR 2, a
disturbed sediment filling burrows, whereas three sherds are from the intact archaeological sediment MIR
3 and one from MIR 4, a fumier - a large burnt cattle dung accumulation - of Middle Bronze Age date (Vergés
et al. 2002, 111-112; Cáceres et al. 2007, 901). Finally, excavations in Sector B at Cueva del Asno in the late
1970s (Eiroa 1979) unearthed a handled bowl with an excised motif (Figure 2.4, 2). This incomplete vessel
lay in a stalagmite layer, related to a charcoal-rich sediment with frequent human remains and decorated
potsherds following an early Cogotas I style, radiocarbon dated to 1870-1520 BC. This Duffaits bowl has been
interpreted as an import, a prestige good accompanying a high-status bride from a distant region interred
there (Delibes et al. 2000, 120-122). These cases illustrate the acknowledgement of excised decorations
before its local widespread use from ca. 1450 BC onwards. Importantly, the earliest local chip-carved
pottery (Figure 2.5), dated to ca. 1800-1700 BC, occur in this very area of the easthern Meseta where caves
with Aquitanian pottery are located, and these Middle Bronze Age local vessels feature excised triangles
resembling the Duffaits motifs (cf. Figure 2.4, 1 & 2; Figure 2.5).
Understanding Similarities In Ceramic Decoration
The three examples of ceramic similarities presented above are, to a certain extent, barely comparable
inasmuch as they represent particular ornamental designs or the preference for certain technological
2� Copying from Sherds
choices. However, the point which I would like to make here is the need to distinguish between the overall
creative process – a topic neglected so far by Iberian archaeologists - and the specific manifestations
of such a process which have been the focus of mainstream attention. Thus, the formal analogies
between ceramic decorations should not be addressed as a homogeneous phenomenon. Indeed, these
resemblances exclusively consist of isolated techniques or decorative motifs rather than involving whole
ornamental patterns (Rodríguez Marcos 2012, 158), and this is a key characteristic of creativity in the
Cogotas I pottery (see below). These decorative choices were adopted by Bronze Age potters from the
earliest Cogotas I productions c.1800 BC (Abarquero et al. 2013) and replicated within cross-regional or
fractal traditions (Robb and Michelaki 2012, 172), thus generating slight creative differences until the
dissolution of this style c.1150 BC (Castro et al. 1995; Abarquero 2005). It is time to consider the prospective
creative mechanisms likely implemented by potters in the Meseta within their wider cultural picture.
Independent creation?, Coincidence?, Craft transmission?... Emulation?
How are we to account for the decorative resemblances between Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age
Iberian ceramics? This question has not been explicitly raised elsewhere (although see Maluquer de Motes
1956, 196) and possible answers have accommodated to successive research agendas. Out of the array
of plausible creative mechanisms, relatively few have been adequately assessed, and none of them has
benefited from recent theoretical debates. Therefore, in the following I discuss some of such hypotheses
drawing on current arguments dealing with creativity, innovation or craft learning and transmission
Figure 2.5. One of the earliest Middle Bronze Age excised motifs from a stratified context at Los Tolmos (Caracena, Soria) (photo: Museo
Numantino).
2� Copying from Sherds
Considering Creativity
28
(e.g. Torrence and van der Leeuw 1989; Mithen 1998; Jones 2007; Ingold and Hallam 2007; Hosfield 2009;
Lohnmann 2010). In order to make sense of the ceramic decorative resemblances spotlighted here, I
depart from acknowledging that they may be more adequately understood as illustrative occurrences
embedded within particular sociological, cosmological and craft backgrounds. Ultimately, I intend to posit
an inclusive and cogent argument capable of integrating their adoption and iterative performance (Jones
2012, 19-22), as well as their successful appropriateness within ever changing cultural entanglements
(Hodder 2012).
The first sensible interpretive proposition is based on the notion of autonomous imagination involving
ex novo or independent innovation. This concept is now envisaged as far more complex than previously
thought, and in fact ‘imaginative creation is only one stage in the innovation of traditions’ (Lohnmann
2010, 230), inasmuch as it involves reinterpretation according to pre-existing cultural tenets. Maluquer
de Motes (1956) drew on a simpler version of such a concept and linked it to technical efficiency when
discussing the stab-and-drag in Cogotas I and other wares. Thus, he regarded this convergence as
‘completely logical, because in both cases we are dealing with techniques for encrusting coloured paste,
and the Boquique is the most perfect way to anchor it on the vessel surface’ (Maluquer de Motes 1956,
196). However, nowadays we know that neither the Early Neolithic (Figure 2.2, 1) nor the Late Bronze
Age stab-and-drag designs (Figure 2.2, 3) were exclusively made to be inlayed. Recent disturbance or
chemical alteration cannot be solely invoked to meet the absence of inlays in many Bronze Age vessels
which simply never received such accretions (Blasco 2001; Blanco-González 2014). On the other hand,
experimental replication has also pointed out that the stab-and-drag was a time-consuming task that
required expert bodily performance (Alday 2009, 11-19), but similar outcomes can be reached through
easier, less demanding procedures (Alday and Moral 2011, 66). Why then did prehistoric craftspeople
mainly choose this variant instead of simpler techniques? It seems reasonable to guess that other powerful
reasons might have oriented the selection of such cultural choice. Likewise, considering the excision
in Western Europe as a truly independent local innovation would involve ignoring its widespread use
throughout the rest of the continent. It would also require disregarding the overwhelming evidence
on the fluid long-distance cultural interactions in Iberia during the second millennium BC (Fernández-
Posse 1998; Ruiz Gálvez 1998; Blasco 2002-2003, 2003; Celestino et al. 2008; Abarquero 2012, 98-101). The
presence of probable chip-carved Aquitanian prototypes in Middle Bronze Age contexts in the Meseta
(Delibes et al. 2000) also raises new possibilities that have hitherto been unexplored.
The second interpretive proposal is mere coincidence. This can be ruled out since resemblances between
Bell-Beaker and Cogotas I wares are too numerous and strikingly analogous to be accounted for by
random circumstances. The third interpretive model is based upon direct transference or learning of
craft techniques in non-literate societies (Rowlands 1993). It is also known as vertical or parent-to-child
transmission of craft skills (Hosfield 2009, 46; Crown 2007, 678-679). From a semiotic perspective this
procedure is based upon physical contiguity and indexical relations (Knappett 2010, 86-87), that is, the
similarity of cultural traits is due to their routine association and emulation within communities of
practice. The uninterrupted trans-generational and trans-cultural transmission of ceramic decorations
was an hypothesis tacitly accepted by some scholars (e.g. Almagro Basch 1939, 138). More recently, the
verification of such a possibility has been made dependent on a contentious criterion: the tracking of
the material intermediate nexus between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age (e.g. Fernández-Posse 1982,
149; Rodríguez Marcos 2007, 371) as if the archaeological record were a faithfully reflection of cultural
processes. Nowadays there is little room for such claims; vertical transmission of the stab-and-drag
technique seems very unlikely to account for the prolonged gap between Early Neolithic (5500-4400
BC) and Cogotas I (1800-1150 BC) pottery. In between, the mentioned Bell-Beaker vessels (2600-2000 BC)
exhibiting stab-and-drag motifs (Figure 2.2, 2a & 2b) cannot be regarded as evidence for a supposedly
long-lasting ornamental tradition. On the contrary, such scattered Ciempozuelos-style vessels were far
from everyday items and they might better testify to the restrictive deployment of stab-and-drag designs
on a few one-off creations, hardly emulated nor replicated beyond very restricted contexts (Hodder 2012,
154-155). Their extraordinary contextual associations also underline their selective use and cessation on
highly meaning-laden occasions. For example, the Beaker pot from sector 1F at the salt factory of Molino
2� Copying from Sherds
Sanchón II (Zamora) (Figure 2.2, 2b) was deposited in a well for brine alongside one large Beaker sherd
featuring a ‘symbolic’ schematic deer similar to that represented on Las Carolinas Bowl (Abarquero et al.
2012, 206, fig. 189, 330-336, Plate. 164; Guerra-Doce et al. 2011, 812, figs. 6 & 9) (Figure 2.2, 2a).
Recent archaeometric analyses on Bell-Beaker (2600-2000 BC) and Cogotas I (1800-1150 BC) encrusted
ceramics are providing crucial data to discuss the hypothetical vertical transference of decorative
techniques between temporally unconnected wares. Only a handful of chemical studies are available yet
(Odriozola et al. 2012), but the results point towards a disruption in the technological choices between
both assemblages. Thus, the white pastes among Ciempozuelos wares in the Meseta were mainly made of
calcium carbonate (ground calcite rocks or mollusc shells), whereas Cogotas I potters employed biological
apatite (crushed and burnt bone) (Odriozola et al. 2012, 148, Table 1) similar to other contemporary
European inlayed pottery traditions (Roberts et al. 2008). This means that Bronze Age craftspeople looked
for an aesthetic effect comparable to that reached by Bell-Beaker potters, but employing different raw
materials and procedures. In other words, we are dealing with two different technical identities (Blasco
and Baena 1996, 433; Odriozola et al. 2012, 150). In short, the absence of proof supporting the very long-
term transmission of ceramic decorations should be noted (c.f. Hosfield 2009). None of the ornamental
resemblances among Cogotas I pottery and previous wares can be satisfactorily addressed by this model.
If we are to reject independent innovation or mere coincidence and accept a disruption in the transmission
of these decorative practices, then emulation stands out as the most plausible option. Decorative choices
might have been easily imitated, as they were only pursued as an iconic resemblance, and thus they
were prone to horizontal transmission (Bentley and Shennan 2003; Hosfield 2009, 46). In other words,
‘copying that can be achieved without any richly-textured, high-fidelity knowledge’ (Knappett 2010, 86).
Since innovation and replication are not clear-cut oppositions (Lohnmann 2010, 222-225), mimicry is
to be considered a kind of creative engagement rather than a mere mechanical task. In order to fully
understand this possibility, it must be contextualized within its wider picture.
An Hypothesis Regarding Creativity In Later Bronze Age Central Iberia
This final section presents an argument to cope with the old topic of formal resemblances between
disconnected ceramic assemblages in later prehistoric Iberia, regarded here as a case for mimetic
creativity, the most appealing hypothesis in view of the above discussion. First, however, it is necessary
to pay some attention to the socio-cultural and cosmological schemes that constrained and promoted
creative processes among these prehistoric groups. After this the probable roles played by ceramic
decorations in Bronze Age inner Iberia will be addressed.
Factors embedding creativity among Cogotas I communities
During the Middle and Late Bronze Age (1800-1150 BC) inland Iberia was occupied by scattered kin-
related communities who practiced cereal agriculture, forestry and stockbreeding. Their extensive agro-
pastoral strategies involved the location of their settlements in the richest sedimentary soils in terms of
agricultural exploitation. These open-air farmsteads are archaeologically recorded as pit sites, yielding
almost no other features but numerous pits and rare ephemeral wattle-and-daub huts (Harrison 1994,
1995; Fernández-Posse 1998; Blasco 2001, 2003; Abarquero 2005; Abarquero et al. 2013). In contrast to
other Iberian regions, one key feature of Bronze Age communities in the Meseta is their perpetuation
of atavistic practices: they moved around the same lowland landscapes, very often settled in the same
locations, performed analogous rare pit inhumations or metalwork offerings as did their predecessors,
and frequented ‘sacred locales’ such as old ditched enclosures, megaliths and caves (Blasco 2001, 2002-
2003; Delibes 2000-2001, 2004; Esparza et al. 2012). Later prehistoric pit sites in Central Iberia were
systematically dug into sandy and loose riverbanks, where weak and ephemeral sedimentary processes
- except inside the pits - might have led to the dispersion of cultural debris on their surface. This was
especially likely by the Late Bronze Age, after four millennia of discarding material culture. The retrieval
of Neolithic and Copper Age remains from the ground might have also been contributed by cultivation,
2� Copying from Sherds
Considering Creativity
the occasional disturbance of ancient landmarks and the extensive pit-digging over pre-existing sunken
features (Chapman and Gaydarska 2007, 174; Hingley 2009, 145). The likelihood of this occurrence is
strongly supported by the frequency of Bronze Age reoccupations of previous later prehistoric sites in
the Meseta (Blanco-González 2015).
Anachronistic items in Iberian Bronze Age contexts have remained hitherto unnoticed or been regarded
as accidental erratic residues (although see Aranda et al. 2015), mainly because they are not expected.
Nevertheless, focusing exclusively on pottery, Neolithic and Copper Age potsherds are known in
undisturbed features of second-millennium BC date. The following illustrative examples are not the
result of any systematic bibliographic search, and they only represent the tip of the iceberg.
In the Middle Bronze Age settlement of Peñalosa (Jaén), located in the Argaric Iberian southeast
(Figure 2.1), one Dornajos-type Bell-Beaker sherd and one Copper Age incised rim fragment were
found alongside early Cogotas I ware in a domestic context (Contreras and Alarcón 2012, 173, fig.
5; Aranda et al. 2015: 20). The former sherd is outstanding as it is both from another time (the third
millennium BC) and from another region (the Southern Meseta). In the contemporary site of La Horra
(Burgos) extraordinary measures were adopted after the simultaneous death of three young siblings
c.1600-1400 BC (Sánchez-Polo and Blanco-González 2014). These involved the planned demise of a hut
and the deposition of ‘relics’ such as Early Neolithic sherds – one of them with stab-and-drag designs
predating the use of this technique by Bronze Age potters (Figure 2.6, 1) - and also Bell-Beaker sherds
(Figure 2.6, 2). Beaker ceramics have been also retrieved from Middle and Late Bronze Age features.
Thus, in Pit 36C at La Huelga (Palencia), 11 Beaker potsherds were thrown on the uppermost layer of
a shaft containing an articulated dog dated to 1700-1600 BC (Liesau et al. 2014), whereas the fill of a
pit burial in Cerro de la Cabeza (Ávila) dated to 1400-1200 BC also yielded a Beaker sherd (Fabián et al.
2010, 187, fig. 6).
Besides those items derived from their own past, Bronze Age people in inland Iberia handled a series
of ‘travelling things’ (Hahn and Weiss 2013) also deposited in unusual contexts. The above-mentioned
Figure 2.6. 1) Early Neolithic sherd with stab-and-drag decoration; 2) Bell Beaker sherd, both found in undisturbed Middle
Bronze Age contexts at El Cerro (Burgos) (photos: A. Sánchez Polo).
2� Copying from Sherds
Duffaits sherds are a good example of such a category of objects in Middle Bronze Age contexts. In
the well-recorded cave of El Mirador, these imports (Figure 2.4, 1) were abandoned after 1760-1610
BC in association with a bronze flat axe (Vergés et al. 2002, 121) and a cache of disarticulated human
remains which belonged to six ancestors several centuries older (2480-1940 BC) deposited in a shallow
pit (Vergés et al. 2002: 114-116; Cáceres et al. 2007: 900-902). More explicit are the examples in the Late
Bronze Age (1450-1150 BC), when the circulation and exchange of long-distance exotica in Iberia –
particularly metalwork - was channeled through large-scale Atlantic and Mediterranean networks
(e.g. Ruiz Gálvez 1998; Celestino et al. 2008). In addition to current mainstream research focusing on
metalwork, it is worth drawing the reader’s attention towards a handful of allochtonous ceramics.
Thus, several wheel-made sherds have been found in pre-Phoenician contexts in Iberia (c.1200-1050
BC) alongside abundant later hand-made Cogotas I pottery: the secure LH IIIB sherds from Llanete de
los Moros (Córdoba) and more imprecise plain fragments from Gatas (Almería) and Cuesta del Negro
(Granada) (Martín de la Cruz 1990; Perlines 2005; Ruiz Gálvez 2009, 98-102). Hitherto the northernmost
of such imports in Iberia is a wheel-made sherd - a probable LH IIIC piece - found in a Late Bronze Age
pit at La Indiana (Madrid) (Consuegra et al. 2001) (Figure 2.1).
The difference or otherness of these things was very likely noticed by people in the second millennium
BC in the Meseta due to both their distinctive physical attributes and also their extrinsic or ascribed
connotations. This encounter with strange cultural expressions might have represented an intellectual
challenge for them (Bradley 2002, 13; Lucas 2005, 36). Several scholars have linked the occurrence of
prehistoric items out of their original time-space to genealogical ancestry or mythical cosmogonies
(e.g. Hingley 1996, 2009; Gosden and Lock 1998; Bradley 2002), or have highlighted the acquisition of
esoteric knowledge, supernatural power and prestige through exchange and travels (e.g. Kristiansen
and Larsson 2005; Hahn and Weiss 2013). These diverse interpretive accounts may fit different Iberian
examples because the reinterpretation of such pieces by Bronze Age people seems to have been closely
context-dependent. Thus, among Argaric societies (2200-1550 BC) findings such as Copper Age, Bell-
Beaker and Cogotas I ceramics have been recently interpreted as the hybrid multi-cultural materiality
of those communities who resisted the Argaric cultural and political model (Aranda et al. 2015: 19-23).
In order to gain a more accurate and nuanced understanding of these cultural processes, discussion
should go beyond hotly-debated but unsettled chronological concerns - especially when dealing with
metalwork (e.g. Ruiz Gálvez 1998, 2009; Celestino et al. 2008) - and raise other overlooked yet also
crucial questions. These might include the itineraries (Hahn and Weiss 2013) or life cycles (Armada et
al. 2008; Blanco-González 2014) of such ‘mobile things’ in space and time, exploring their particular
recontextualization and eventual abandonment (Bradley 2002; Hingley 2009), or the different multi-
layered temporalities of these items (Lucas 2005; Hodder 2012, 98-102). Nonetheless, for the time being
there is scope for advocating the engagement of Bronze Age people with items spatio-temporally
detached from their original contexts, often in an incomplete state, including partial metallic artifacts
(see Delibes et al. 1995, Carrasco et al. 2012) and also sherds. These things might have accrued transient
meanings depending on their particular biographies. They may well have been treated as cherished
items betokening distant events, places or beings; relics or heirlooms handed down generationally
(Lillios 1999) or valuables redolent of esoteric oral narratives or ‘otherworldly’ prestige items. The
abandonment of Duffaits ceramics in caves, related with human relics of ancestors at El Mirador (Moral
et al. 2003-2004; Cáceres et al. 2007), or the deliberate placement of Early Neolithic sherds in relation
with a traumatic grieving episode at El Cerro (Sánchez-Polo and Blanco-González 2014) could be more
satisfactorily addressed from such an interpretive standpoint.
All these observations offer important clues in terms of the factors enabling and constraining creative
processes among Cogotas I potters. It seems reasonable to contend their probable esteem for tradition
and vernacular ways of doing things in different realms of social practice, from craftwork to more
esoteric instances. Furthermore, the evidence suggests some interaction with items from other spatio-
temporal contexts, acknowledged as unfamiliar or odd, and valued for both their intrinsic (material)
and extrinsic (social) peculiarities.
2� Copying from Sherds
Considering Creativity
The relevance of emulated pottery decorations
Based on the lines of evidence discussed above, there are grounds for proffering the view that the
key creative mechanism responsible for the resemblances between apparently unrelated pottery
assemblages was the emulation of standalone and very apparent decorative traits. It may constitute
a good case for horizontal cultural transmission predicated upon iconic resemblances between easily
imitated formal traits (Knappett 2010). Instead of spontaneous and autonomous innovations, it is far
more compelling to regard these decorative features as interlinked and punctuated ‘way stations along
the trails of living beings, moving through a world’ (Ingold and Hallam 2007, 8). No creative act can be
regarded as really isolated. Instead it ought to be understood as focusing on the nodes in particular fields
of associations (Lohnmann 2010, 216). Thus transference is a proper creative act, copying may be a means
to gain something from the original prototype (Taussig 1993), and ‘no imagination is the sole source of
creation’ (Lohnmann 2010, 230). In a similar vein, Ingold and Hallam (2007, 5) state that imitation ‘entails
a complex and ongoing alignment of observation of the model with action in the world’ since every
creation has been built out of previous ones. This is particularly true in the case of Cogotas I pottery,
within which creativity was a way of ‘making links between bits of information rather than creating
new bits or nodes’ (Hodder 1998, 63). Craftspeople chose to copy or not depending on contingent factors,
namely if these cultural traits were consistent and fitted with many other variables within a particular
entanglement in a particular stage (Hodder 2012, 147-148). At least two of the factors facilitating these
mimetic procedures in the Meseta during the second millennium BC have been identified in this paper:
a strongly conservative rationale pervading the different domains of everyday life, and the availability
of highly valued ‘extemporaneous’ or exogenous items. This is a case for the explicit citation of past,
distant, exotic or alien realities (Jones 2007, 139; Lucas 2012, 201).
Pottery ornamentation in the Cogotas I tradition combined and reinterpreted both local atavistic (e.g.
Abarquero 2005, 24-26; Rodríguez Marcos 2007, 357-367) and widespread pan-European ornaments
(e.g. Blasco 2001, 225, 2003, 67-68; Abarquero 2012, 98-101). From a semiotic perspective such things
transcended large spatio-temporal distances; they were closely associated by iconical shared links in
a relational or cognitive space, whereby these entities were co-presented and indirectly recalled and
perceived despite being distant (Knappett 2010, 85-86). The locally-rooted biases of these creative
quotations can be glimpsed from rare sequences of ceramic productions spanning several generations of
potters. For instance, at Majaladares (Borja, Zaragoza) strong analogies arise between Ciempozuelos wares
featuring unique decorations in this site and Cogotas I wares from the superimposed layers, exhibiting
remarkably similar themes (Harrison 2007, 65-82). Likewise, it is noteworthy that the earliest triangular
excisions in Cogotas I wares occurred in the eastern Meseta, where imported Duffaits vessels featuring
comparable motifs were circulating from several centuries before. Importantly, these mimetic creative
processes relied upon the fragmentary nature of the inspirational sources (Figures 2.4, 1 & 2.5). Bronze
Age potters seem to have partially copied from isolated bits of pottery - hence the title of this essay. This
interpretation might prove useful in explaining why the motifs and techniques reproduced by them are
always fractional, disarranged and patchy when compared to the overall framing on the original Neolithic
and Bell-Beaker vessels (Rodríguez Marcos 2012, 158). In short, what I intend to emphasise here is the
ontological status of these inspirational items as fractal entities, evoking prior wholes of which they are
parts (Chapman and Gaydarska 2007, 173-182; Lucas 2012, 210-214). The incomplete condition of these
sherds, their very fragmentariness, ‘gives people an active role in the interpretative process’ (Burström
2013, 313). In Bronze Age Iberia the recontextualisation of such residues (sensu Lucas 2012, 204-214) was
very probably embedded in cosmological beliefs drawing on past or alien realities, selectively recalled
(Jones 2007) or forgotten (Hodder 2012, 101-103).
In order to bring this chapter to an end, it is important to appraise the importance of the examined
ceramic decorations in their later prehistoric context. There is scope for advocating that these pottery
decorations cannot be envisaged as a form of irrelevant or mundane aesthetic garnish for the sake of art.
Bronze Age potters drew upon a highly meaningful array of esoteric sources and, in so doing, the vessels
might have echoed designs betokening genealogical, mythical or parallel worlds, in a kind of dialectical
2� Copying from Sherds
negotiation between self and other (Taussig 1993). The very involvement of ancestors and spiritual forces
in making and embellishing a pot is supported by ethnographic evidence (e.g. Crown 2007, 679; Lohnmann
2010, 222) and this also seems plausible in the case of Cogotas I ceramics. These real or imagined beings
might be regarded as inspiring sources of creations, whose role is often to legitimize and guarantee the
accuracy of the involved knowledge (Lohnmann 2010, 222). In the same vein, the smearing of colored
inlays on certain pots ought to be properly understood beyond an aesthetic action of embellishment, as
our own rationale prompts us to assume. The vessels so treated (Figure 2.3, 2) became truly enchanting
or eye-catching objects (Harrison 2007, 78) and this distinctive way of marking some pots may be linked
to particular circumstances undergone by them. Thus, the smearing of coloured inlays might have been
used to convey biographical information on the life-cycles of these vessels (Blanco-González 2014, 446).
However, because ‘much of the creative process occurs outside conscious awareness’ (Lohnmann 2010,
224) these mimetic creative procedures should not always be understood as fully discursive whatever
their contexts.
Furthermore, this pottery tradition needs to be understood as an effective means of socialization and
a key resource in the forging of identities. Decorating certain intricate Cogotas I vessels (Figure 2.2, 3b;
Figure 2.4, 3) very likely involved an ostentatious difficulty (Robb and Michelaki 2012, 168; Abarquero
2005, 438) and the proficiency displayed in such tasks may have accrued even moral connotations
(Hendon 2010, 146-147). Learning to perform some of the pottery decoration discussed here certainly
required complex training processes involving both expert potters and mentored apprentices (Crown
2007; Hosfield 2009, 46). Thus, the stab-and-drag technique demanded time-consuming learning as
well as careful and thorough execution (Alday 2009, 11-19). Likewise the selection and processing of
particular raw materials – mainly bones - to attain the white inlays involved direct observation and
hands-on training (Odriozola et al. 2012, 150). This cooperative learning framework led to the closed
transmission of decorative techniques and themes among these potters (Ruiz Zapatero 2007, 46-47). The
degree of workmanship was very likely recognized (Dietler and Herbich 1989, 154) and as a result, the
engagement in creative action constituted at the same time a project of the self (Robb and Michelaki
2012, 174). These potters were probably considered skilled recipients of customary ways of decorating
vessels, esteemed by conveying the received conventions (Lohnmann 2010, 223) within the Cogotas I
tradition. By this means, valuable vessels took on part of the qualities of their makers, and conversely
the potters’ embodied skills and resourcefulness via their manufacturing process (Chapman 2000, 30).
Personification and materialization, the acquisition of non-discursive know-how and becoming a potter
were thus two faces of the same mutual process (Budden and Sofaer 2009).
Finally, the role of the Cogotas I pottery decoration was also deeply rooted in the sphere of social
interactions through particular communal practices of exhibition and consumption. The celebration of
commensality rituals is very often predicated as a key social practice among these communities (e.g.
Harrison 1995, 74; Abarquero 2005, 56; Blanco-González 2014, 453). Potters embodied and replicated non-
discursive shared tenets on a routine basis, but by means of these social gatherings and the deployment
of such festive services ‘their visual materialisation made them part of the habitus of everybody’
(Chapman and Gaydarska 2007, 182). Bronze Age groups in the Meseta have recently been characterized
as scarcely integrated, short-lasting and unstable social units, lacking long-term cultural rules and
institutions, restricted to one generation lifespan at the most (Blanco-González 2015). In such a context,
the investment in symbolic capital might have been a crucial task for the reproduction of social order
(Bourdieu 1972, 178-183). From this perspective, pottery decoration during the Bronze Age in central
Iberia may have played a role akin to that posited for Grooved Ware in southern Britain (Thomas 2010, 12).
It was a pervasive and ubiquitous routine material medium (Braun 1983) through which coherence and
integrity were given to very transient and disarranged social cells scattered in the landscape. Likewise,
the emphasis on continuity and mimicry may allow to conclude that, ‘here the creativity may be involved
in maintaining stability in the face of contingency’ (Hodder 1998, 68). Ultimately, the fittingness of such
conventional creative expressions in open-ended and ever-changing webs of dependences (Hodder 2012,
139) helps in explaining the widespread coherence of such decorative choices throughout inner Iberia,
as well as their duration for seven centuries.
2� Copying from Sherds
Considering Creativity
Concluding Remarks
In this essay I have tried to make an argument for understanding creativity in the Bronze Age through its
most ordinary and ubiquitous material medium: pottery. I have examined a set of decorative traits in the
Cogotas I ceramic tradition whose remarkable analogies with other later prehistoric wares stand out as
a key characteristic so far void of any satisfactory account. My focus on the socio-political, cosmological
and technical background to ceramic decoration has allowed a glimpse of some scenarios in which
Cogotas I potters could have encountered and interacted with diverse outsider or alien ceramic items
out of their time-space, resulting in creative responses. This approach has also provided evidence for an
overall strongly conservative rationale pervading diverse realms of social practice. Taking into account
the evidence for Bronze Age lifestyles in inner Iberia, I propose that the main mechanism responsible
for the observed resemblances in the ceramics was the mimicry and quotation of ornamental traits from
fragmentary and detached sources of inspiration. Replicating some of these prototypes, such as the stab-
and-drag designs, would have required a close scrutiny followed by careful, meticulous reproduction. In
other cases, such as the excised decoration or the inlaying of white paste, a looser mimetic procedure
was employed. The meanings of such citations were probably far from fixed and depended on specific
contextual frameworks; in certain circumstances such themes and techniques might even have been even
reproduced in an unconscious way. In the light of this fresh interpretive proposal, the available evidence
prompts a reconsideration of creativity among these Bronze Age potters as a particular way of linking
successive dots. Once emulated and adopted, such decorative traits were probably regarded themselves
as received traditional marks of identity. Conveying these motifs and techniques thus constituted a
social strategy to counteract circumstantial disturbances, engaging both potters and consumers with
issues such as self-awareness and ‘otherness’.
Acknowledgements
This work has been possible due to the European Commission-funded Marie Curie project Past Fragments
(FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF-298285) and a post-doctoral contract (FPDI-2013-17394) funded by the Spanish
Ministry of Economy. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Joanna Sofaer, Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and the
whole team of the CinBA Project for their encouraging support during the Cambridge conference, and
especially for inviting me to contribute to this volume. I am very grateful to Alfonso Alday (Universidad
del Pais Vasco), Sergio Moral, Antonio F. Dávila (Museo Arqueológico Regional, Madrid), Alberto González
(Museo de San Isidro) and Maria Angeles Arlegui (Museo Numantino, Soria) for providing me with
photographs to illustrate this chapter. Javier Abarquero, Antonio Bellido, Pedro Díaz-del-Río, Alfredo
Jimeno, Alfredo Mederos and J. A. Rodríguez Marcos helped me during the writing of this essay.
References
Cogotas I. La difusión de un tipo cerámico durante la Edad del Bronce.
Cogotas I, una
cultura de la Edad del Bronce en la Península Ibérica
1600 - Kultureller Umbruch im Schatten des Thera-Ausbruchs?,
Arqueología de la Sal en las
Lagunas de Villafáfila (Zamora): Investigaciones sobre los cocederos prehistóricos
Reflejos del Neolítico Ibérico. La cerámica boquique: caracteres, cronología y contexto
Las Primeras Producciones Cerámicas. El VI
milenio cal AC en la Península Ibérica
2� Copying from Sherds
Ampurias
The Archaeology of Bronze Age Iberia. Argaric
Societies.
Contacto cultural
entre el Mediterráneo y el Atlántico (siglos XII-VIII ane). La precolonización a debate,
American
Antiquity
pottery in Spain. Antiquity
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
El Horizonte Campaniforme en la Región de Madrid en el centenario de Ciempozuelos.
Spal
Boletín de la
Asociación Española de Amigos de la Arqueología
Estudios de Arqueología dedicados a la profesora Ana María Muñoz Amilibia
(eds) Cogotas I: Una cultura de la Edad del Bronce en la Península Ibérica.
de Valladolid.
El Hombre Fósil’ 80 años después. Homenaje a Hugo
Obermaier
Creativity in Human Evolution and Prehistory, 22-
Outline of a Theory of Practice
The past in prehistoric societies
Archaeological Hammers and Theories,
Cambridge Archaeological
Journal
Reclaiming Archaeology: Beyond the Tropes of Modernity
Boletín del Seminario de Estudios de Arte
y Arqueología
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Trabajos de Prehistoria
Contacto cultural entre el Mediterráneo y el Atlántico (siglos
XII-VIII ane). La precolonización a debate
Fragmentation in Archaeology. People, places and broken objects in the prehistory of South
Eastern Europe
Parts and Wholes. Fragmentation in Prehistoric Context
American
Antiquity
presented at the Segundo Encuentro de Arqueología de Molina de Aragón: el Bronce Final en la Meseta (Molina
de Aragón 2001).
2� Copying from Sherds
Considering Creativity
Cogotas I: Una cultura de la Edad
del Bronce en la Península Ibérica
El Vaso Campaniforme en la Meseta Norte española
Tribuna d’Arqueologia
Zephyrus
Mainake
Homenaje al Profesor Martín
González
Soria Arqueológica. A José Luis Argente
Oliver
definition of ceramic style. World Archaeology
La Cueva del Asno de Los Rábanos (Soria). Campañas 1976 y 1977. Madrid, Ministerio de
Cultura.
Cogotas I: Una cultura de la Edad del Bronce en la Península Ibérica. Valladolid,
Cogotas I, una cultura de la
Edad del Bronce en la Península Ibérica
Arqueología, Sociedad, Territorio y Paisaje. Homenaje a
María Dolores Fernández-Posse
Trabajos de Prehistoria
La investigación protohistórica en la Meseta y Galicia.
El Campaniforme en la Meseta Central de la Península Ibérica (c. 2500-2000 A.C.)
Iberia. Protohistory of the far west of
Europe. From Neolithic to Roman conquest
Antiquity
The past in the past:
the reuse of ancient monuments. World Archaeology
Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory
Mobility, Meaning and Transformation of Things,
The Bell Beaker Cultures of Spain and Portugal
and S. Stoddart (eds.) Development and decline in the Mediterranean Bronze Age
Veleia
Majaladares (Spain). A Bronze Age Village of Farmers, Hunters and Herders.
Houses in a Landscape. Memory and Everyday Life in Mesoamerica
reinvention of Neolithic monuments and material culture. World Archaeology
2� Copying from Sherds
Proceedings of
the Prehistoric Society
Creativity in Human
Evolution and Prehistory
Entangled. An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things
(ed.) Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution
The Perception of the Environment. Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill
Creativity and Cultural Improvisation
Los Tolmos de Caracena (Soria). Campañas de 1977, 1978 y 1979. Nuevas bases para el estudio
de la Edad del Bronce en la zona del Alto Duero. Madrid, Ministerio de Cultura.
Memory and Material Culture
Prehistoric Materialities. Becoming material in prehistoric Britain and Ireland
The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the boundaries of the mind
The Rise of Bronze Age Society. Travels, Transmissions and
Transformations
Mithen (ed.) Creativity in Human Evolution and Prehistory
(The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Zephyrus
Journal of
Archaeological Method and Theory
The Archaeology of Time
Understanding the Archaeological Record
Anthropological Forum
Zephyrus
Pont de Roque-Haute. Nouveaux regards sur la néolithisation de la France
méditerranéenne
Praeistorischen
Zeitschrift
Una revisión crítica de la prehistoria española: la Edad del Bronce como
paradigma
Creativity in Human Evolution and Prehistory
Boletín del Seminario
de Estudios de Arte y Arqueología
Cuadernos de Prehistoria de la Universidad de Granada,
Trabajos de Prehistoria
Estudos Arqueológicos de Oeiras
In Defense of Things
El período orientalizante. Actas del III Simposio
Internacional de Arqueología de Mérida
2� Copying from Sherds
Considering Creativity
Excavating the Mind: Cross-Sections through
Culture, Cognition and Materiality
Journal
of Archaeological Science
Estudio secuencial de la Edad del Bronce en la Ribera del Duero (provincia de
Valladolid)
Cogotas I, una cultura de la Edad del Bronce en la
Península Ibérica
World Archaeology
La Europa Atlántica en la Edad del Bronce. Un viaje a las raíces de la Europa occidental.
de los palacios y la presencia semita. Trabajos de Prehistoria
Estudios sobre la Edad del Hierro en la Carpetania. Registro arqueológico, secuencia y
territorio
Oppida and the roots of urbanism in the
Social Complexity and the development of towns in Iberia.
From the Copper Age to the Second Century A.D.,
Cueva Maja (Cabrejas del Pinar. Soria):
Espacio y simbolismo en los inicios de la Edad del Bronce
European Journal of Archaeology
Mimesis and Alterity: a Particular History of the Senses
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
What’s New? A Closer Look at the Process of Innovation
Trabajos de Prehistoria
Durrington Walls: Excavations 1966–1968
