Symbolic model of Los Millares

The Millares Model shows what the land of the Millares would have been like in the 3rd millennium BCE. The model is innovative in that it is the first time that an archaeological museum attempts to make a historical interpretation of a territory based on contemporary artistic language

Imagine that someone visited Los Millares around 3000 BCE and wanted to describe the settlement to his family on returning home. To do so, he would have used small, readily-available objects: reeds, small stones and pebbles, a discarded goat's skull, shells, etc. The traveller would have used materials like these to build something along the lines of this model. It shows concentric series of rings of the Millares fortification, with circles indicating the huts inside the settlement and others representing the collective burial sites outside the enclosure. On the outer edge of the settlement are the forts surrounding it and the megaliths representing the villages dependent on Los Millares, situated beyond the forts. Meanwhile, the goat track indicates the importance of stockbreeding and transhumance outside the Millares territory. And finally, there are objects associated with the trade conducted by the people of the settlement: bell-beaker pots, ostrich egg shells for making necklace beads and elephant tusks brought the north of Africa to make idols and adornments.