Archaeological Site of Los Millares
Visit the most important archaeological site of the Copper Age in Europe
Archaeological Site of Los Millares
Surely you have taken a surprise to know that the most important archaeological site of the age of copper in Europe is in Almeria. Take advantage of your sight to this land of millenary history to know it.
The town of Los Millares was discovered by chance when the railroad was built to connect Almería with Linares. Warned of the findings, Luis Siret sends his foreman, Pedro Flores, to begin digging the site in 1892. It is located between the municipalities of Santa Fe de Mondújar and Gádor, 17 kilometers from the capital of Almeria. Located on a mound that dominates the junction of the Andarax River with the Rambla de Huéchar, it has an extension surrounded by its walls of 45,000 square meters.
According to some authors, the town is the heir of the Neolithic Culture of Almería and was inhabited between 3200 and 3100 BC. (moment when it began to develop) and 2200 BC, approximately (when it was abandoned). The base of the economy of Los Millares was the agriculture of the cereal of dry land and legumes, as well as the cattle ranch (sheep, goats and pigs). But the need for raw materials for the development of copper tools led to the development of mining (since the area had important copper mining resources), and trade.
In it stands out the sophisticated defensive system, in fact, the Town of Los Millares is protected by three walls that protect in a concentric way three different spaces. In the highest area we find a citadel that is also defended by a wall.
The Necropolis of Los Millares consists of about one hundred graves under. Most of these burials are inhumations, although there are also incinerations. Unlike the megalithic burials (which were reserved for important people from different social groups) in Los Millares there is no social stratification in these burials, since they were communal.
In all the tombs there are various funerary objects, as well as remains of trousseau, such as ceramics, which have helped us to understand how the inhabitants of this town lived.
The pottery of Los Millares is made by hand (without the use of the winch, which will reach the Iberian Peninsula at the hands of the Phoenician colonists in the 1st millennium BC), and decorated with zig-sag and suns band incisions. This element is reminiscent of the Idols that have been found in the different megalithic monuments of the peninsular Southwest. This pottery has appeared in the Tholoi, along with the corpses, so it must be assumed that they were part of the funeral trousseau. In addition, as a curiosity, broken fragments have been found in the atrium of the Tholoi, which seems to explain a funerary ritual, in which he tried to resemble the death of the deceased. On the other hand, the vessels found in the burial chambers sometimes housed food or shells.
The representations of the solar disk seem to refer to some type of belief in the elements of nature, among them the Sun itself.
This pottery has also been related to that of the Campaniform Vase, by the type of decoration in zig-zag bands. In addition it has been the case to find some bell-shaped vessel in the tholos of Los Millares.
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