Bronze Age an Iron Age antropomorphic images in the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

In the third millennium BC, the production of the characteristic art objects in the Iberian Peninsula declined suddenly with the development of the Bronze Age, although the human image continued to be represented on steles until the Iron Age. These constitute the topic of the present chapter. First, the basic characteristics of the Iberian steles will be described. Steles, statutes, statue-menhirs and panels form an ensemble of anthropomorphic images, located mostly in the west of the peninsula. They often lack a conventional archaeological context and had been reused, which makes it difficult to determine their function and chronology, both of which are hotly debated. Two more specific issues will then be addressed. First the relationship between the steles and portable art, particularly as regarding the Alentejo plaques and two groups of Iberian steles, the plaque-steles and the west-central steles, in order to follow the influence of these portable anthro-pomorphic objects, which are very abundant in all the south-west, on the steles. Second, their funerary application, which shows the long use of steles and the modification of their original message as symbolic markers of megaliths.