Ornamental emulation and ancestral ceramics. Some plausible inspirational sources for Bronze Age potters in the Iberian Meseta

• Published in: Zephyrus Vol. 76; pp. 39 - 56
• Main Author: Antonio BLANCO GONZÁLEZ
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca 01.11.2015
• Subjects: campaniforme; cogotas i; decoración cerámica; imitación; meseta; neolítico; transmisión artesanal
• ISSN: 0514-7336; 2386-3943
• DOI: 10.14201/zephyrus2015763956

This paper explores decorative resemblances between Neolithic and Chalcolithic ceramics and pottery in the Cogotas i style –Later Bronze Age–. A diachronic approach from the Early Neolithic allows tracking a series of recurring ornamental motifs and techniques throughout later prehistory: comparable geometric themes, the deployment of stab-and-drag –Boquique– and excision techniques and smearing of white inlays. In order to account for such analogies, a suite of options is assessed: mere coincidence, independent innovation, trans-cultural endurance of craftwork procedures. The most likely hypothesis considers a revival of such technological decisions by potters in the second millennium bc; they did so fully aware of their alien character. Such pottery features were used to elaborate a symbolic code displayed on vessels, whose transmission and faithful reproduction were of crucial importance. Ancient potsherds were used as prototypes by potters, and might have been understood as part of ancestral, esoteric or mythical realities. Such cultural preference is consistent with the habitual handling of relics and anachronistic or exotic things. The lifestyles of these people facilitated their encountering of remains from their past, either removing soil (to cultivate and pit-digging) on the same settings occupied by their predecessors, or visiting and altering old megaliths and tumuli, caves and ditched enclosures.