Prehistory: The Society of El Argar

The society’s name comes from the archaelogical site of El Argar, located at the municipality of Antas and uncovered in the nineteenth century thanks to the excavations by the Siret brothers. The traces of El Argar society are disseminated over a wide area that covers a large part of eastern Andalusia, Murcia and the south of Alicante.

The climax of Argaric society coincided with the development of great states, such as the Middle Empire of Egypt, the Babylonia of Hammurabi demographical and economic development, and it created inequalities and a social exploitation unparalleled in Western Europe and the Magreb.

No other contemporary society in Western Europe reached comparable levels of social inequality.

According to Carbon-14 dating, El Argar society survived nearly 700 years, until around 1550 BCE. It seems that it disappeared as abruptly, and probably as violently, as it was born.

This period is part of the so-called Early Bronze Age in Western Europe.

En la segunda planta del museo podemos realizar un recorrido On the second floor of the museum we can take a complete symbolic tour of the Argaric Society (2nd Millennium BCE). In this way, referring to the strong social hierarchy of El Argar, we move literally upward as if we were climbing up the slopes of to one of the province's most emblematic locations, Fuente Álamo (Cuevas del Almanzora, Almería).

Only a quarter of the population lived in the central settlements. Below the settlement is a plain, the land used for economic exploitation and dependent on the settlement. Most of the population live in small farmsteads or scattered hamlets, dedicated to agriculture, livestock breeding, and producing raw materials.

In terms of subsistence strategies, highlighted is the acquisition of stone, that besides serving as a construction material, was also used to make tombstones, as well as different types of tools, such as handmills, which we can see in the exhibition a display of mass-produced objects.

In the period of El Argar, a technological novelty was introduced, which consisted of using long and narrow mills above which they worked with wooden hands. Nevertheless, the milling continued being a hard work that needed several working hours per day.

The finding of series of mills reveals that the demand of flour changed depending on the available stock and the crops.

The dominant class imposed economic strategies in ways that seem dysfunctional; an example of this is what almost amounted to the monoculture of barley, given that it was easy to control.

The fruits of their labour, however, were centralised in larger settlements, as represented in the model. These were located on steep hills, at the foot of the mountain ranges.

Transportation of grain from the fields in the plain was hard work done by the peasants, because, as aforementioned, only part of the population, including the members of the dominant class, lived in the central settlements.

Many Argaric buildings were used as multi-use workshops to supply commodities to wide sectors of the society. They met two basic needs of any society: food and clothes.

The following is a list of the main activities carried out in these mass production sites:
- Storage of barley and, sometimes, of wheat, beans and peas.
- Storage of lithic resources (stones, flint flakes) and mills.
- Fabric manufacturing.
- Repairing of sickles.
- Manufacturing and repairing wooden, bone, and stone tools.
- Bread baking in clay ovens.

The first of the cabinets features the large storage vessels; generous pots, urns and even larger containers referred to by their name in Greek: pithoi.

The hilltop settlements had warehouses where they had huge stockpiles of grains, such as barley.

The second cabinet focuses on typology of Argaric ceramics. It shows how over a hundreds years , and there are only eight basic, absolutely geometrical forms and a considerable lack of decoration, especially when compared with how frequently decoration was used prior to that time and in subsequent periods (the result of Louis Siret's research and whose classification is still valid today).

We can only find eight ceramic forms that are repeated to exhaustion, the so-called "Argaric norm.”

The objects include bowls, spherical, and tulip-shaped pots, the latter alternating between convex and concave sections, biconical pots and cups, among others seen in the exhibition.

The cups would have played an important role beyond daily use; they may have been used in ceremonies, indicated by their accumulation in certain areas, such as the towers at Fuente Álamo.

Clearly, this standardisation of pottery is connected with economic redistribution strategies and the practice of a taboo which prevented breaking by apparently overly strict rules.

The third large cabinet is dedicated to copper, mining and bronze metalwork.

At the metal workshops of the central settlements, people worked with copper, silver and gold.

The first artefacts in bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, date from 1800 – 1700 BCE.

One of the advantages of bronze is that it provides hardness to the smelted products, while allowing for lower smelting temperatures.

In the museography of the Museum of Almeria, we are suddenly taken aback by a series of words written on the wall: hunger, death, fear, metal, me, mine and power. This is a plea in strong, almost harsh, language about the origins of private property and the state.

We know of about a thousands graves spread across the entire Argaric territory. These graves and their contents constitute first rate evidence for the study of this society.

The Argaric society buries its people mostly in individual graves dug in the subsoil of their villages, the most frequent types of burials being in small artificial caves, pottery urns, cists and pits.

Small artificial caves were dug out of the rocks, with stone slabs or timber blocking the entrance way. They date back to the period between 2250 and 1700 BCE.

Urns are ceramic vessels in different sizes which were placed into a pit, and closed with a stone or with other inverted ceramic glass. They started being used in 1950 BCE.

Cist graves are rectangular boxes often made of stone slabs or masonry, and they were used throughout the whole period of El Argar (2250 – 1550 BCE).

The same applies to pits, which are mere holes dug in the ground, sometimes filled with stones.

This society had a clear division of classes.

The Argaric society maintains a rigid hierarchical structure, as shown in their grave goods. For the first time, the social status is established from childhood.

- Ruling Class.

- Commoners.

- Servants and Slaves.

Outstanding exhibits are the funerary objects from tombs 75 (gold bracelet) and 111 at Fuente Álamo from a girl with a high social position from the time of her birth, as testified to by the concept “inheritance."

Firstly, there was the dominant class, comprising men initially armed with halberds or short swords and from 1800 BCE onwards with long swords to deter the population from any attempt at rebellion against the established social order. Some women were members of these powerful groups and are buried with headbands and, usually, silver adornments. The women were also buried with a knife and awl, which seems to demonstrate their relation to specific tasks.

Women, men, and children of the ruling class, show off valuable bronze, silver and gold ornaments. The funeral offerings that they receive also include high quality pottery. The use of Argaric cups seems to have been restricted to the high classes.

Staring 1800 BCE, there is a social class formed by commoners-subjects with social rights-which are guaranteed much better life conditions than the class below them. Its members are in charge of certain productive tasks, as well as helping to subjugate the rest of the population.

Men belonging to this class were buried with daggers and axes and the women with a knife and awl. The funerary offerings for both sexes could include adornments, usually made out of bronze, but never made of gold. There is also an abundance of pottery containers from everyday use.

In the last place were the serfs and slaves whose remoteness from the high classes seems to have become increasingly marked with the passing of time. Members of this class were buried without offerings or, at most, with a pot, adornment or simple tool.

The gradual deterioration of their circumstances and, at the same time, the depletion of the land is clear: these factors may have led to revolts which spelled the collapse of the Argaric society and the appearance of new forms of production which are roughly outlined in the top end of the room dedicated to the demise of El Argar society.