The Marq as told by its guides

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In this space we tell you about the Marq through those who tell it, every day.

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MARQ

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Modern and Contemporary Ages Room

Petrer, Archaeology and Museum

Cocentaina, Archaeology and museum

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PARTS

THE ROMAN MOSAIC OF CALPE

Hello to all of you!

We continue with more articles in #yomequedoencasaconelmarq, today we are going to talk about the mosaic found in the Roman villa of Baños de la Reina in Calpe (Marina Alta). This piece is located in the final area of the Roman culture room of our permanent exhibition and is one of the most emblematic pieces in the MARQ collection. This mosaic was found in the excavations directed by M. Pellicer in the 1960s, who recovered part of the mosaics already documented and illustrated by Cavanilles in the 18th century.

In terms of its formal characteristics, the mosaic from the villa of the Baños de la Reina in Calpe is made up of black and white tesserae. On the white background, there is a design formed by a main plant scene, consisting of a vine growing out of a ceramic vessel. Between the branches of the vine are winged human figures carrying baskets in the act of gathering the fruit. On the right-hand side of the mosaic there is also a bird that seems to be flying towards one of the branches to land on it. As for its chronology, according to the technique used and the parallels found in other Hispano-Roman villas, it dates from the 2nd-3rd century AD. According to research, this mosaic, together with another documented by Cavanilles in the 18th century, could form part of the same paving around a circular structure. We find similar mosaics in typology and structure in our lands, such as the one found in the ancient Villa Petraria (nowadays Petrel) which was restored in the restoration laboratory of the MARQ, and was later exhibited in our museum during the temporary exhibition "Petrel, Archaeology and Museum".

These mosaics were found in habitat areas and other rooms linked to a Roman industrial production villa located on the coast of the Marina Alta. This industrial residence was of capital importance in the development of the economic and social life of these lands during the first centuries of our era.

Thanks to all the mosaics documented since the 18th century in the archaeological site of the Roman villa of the Baños de la Reina, we can conclude that it is a residential villa of the Roman aristocracy which contains one of the most important and numerous sets of mosaics in the whole province of Alicante, surpassed only by the site of the Colonia Iuila Ilici Augusta (Elche). It is therefore an honour and a privilege to have in our permanent collection one of the most important and historic mosaics of our land.

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide

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PARTS

Bronze Hand

The discovery of the Bronze Hand

Port yac 1505 1 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Port yac 1805 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

PARTS

Argaric Cup

GESTURES THAT UNITE: AN ARGARIC CUP.

Hello to all of you!

We continue with more articles in #yomequedoencasaconelmarq, this time I am going to talk about an Argaric Cup that came to MARQ's collection through a donation by Ms. Margarita Ramón-Borja Berenguer in 2013. The Argaric Culture developed throughout the Bronze Age in the southeast of the peninsula, with the Bajo Vinalopó and Vega Baja regions being the main centres of this prehistoric culture in Alicante.

Among the most important sites in Alicante linked to this culture are Cabezo Pardo in San Isidro, Tabayá in Aspe and Caramoro I in Elche. This culture has its northern limit in Alicante, specifically at the site of La Illeta (El Campello) where archaeological remains associated with this society were also found, deposited in the MARQ and exhibited, many of them, in the chronological-cultural room dedicated to Prehistory.

The cup to which we dedicate this post today is more than 3,500 years old. These cups have been of great importance from the point of view of archaeological research, as pottery in general has been one of the fundamental tools used to recognise this culture from the archaeological record and to distinguish it from other contemporary societies on the Iberian Peninsula. Argaric cups have been found mainly in funerary contexts, where they were used mainly for drinking beverages as part of a complex ritual process carried out in honour of the deceased. Some of these cups were also used in domestic contexts and may even have been used as lamps, according to researchers specialising in this Bronze Age culture.

In 2017, this piece and two others with similar characteristics were part of a small exhibition located in the main hall of the museum under the suggestive title "Take and drink. A cup for a millenary ritual", where three Argaric cups were exhibited, which were key to understanding the material culture of these people of the Peninsular Bronze Age and the complex ritual processes of a funerary nature that existed in this prehistoric society developed between 2200 and 1500 BC.

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide.

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PARTS

The "Orellut" of Lucentum

Port yac 0505 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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PARTS

Roman lanterns

Port guia 0705 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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PARTS

The Iberian Ladies

The most famous and well-known Iberian ladies are: The Lady of Elche and the Lady of Baza. Both predate the 4th century BC and, as we know, have a multitude of ornaments.

The Lady of Elche is a piece that represents the bust of a woman of spectacular beauty and is the image of the Iberian world par excellence. It was found in 1897, and through a microscopic study it was discovered that the stone from which it was carved came from the Ferriol Quarry (Elche).

It seems that this lady was buried for many years. According to experts, in this burial, a small enclosure was made with stones, in which the lady was placed and later covered with sand (possibly beach sand). Researchers and archaeologists who have studied it extensively say that the piece was polychrome, i.e. painted with colours, but the passage of time, humidity, salt and light, etc. have caused them to decompose.

It has a hole in the dorsal part, which was originally thought to be used to deposit offerings, to hold and hang, or even to be used as an oracle.

But all these doubts were resolved in 1971, with the discovery of the Dama de Baza. A statue of a woman seated on a winged throne, representing the journey from the world of the living to the world of the dead, we can see some disproportions in her and that she lacks a breast. In her left hand she holds a dove, one of the symbols of the winged divinity, and is therefore closely linked to religion. But the peculiarity of this piece is that under the right arm of the throne there is a hollow in which some small bones have been found. This is a funerary urn. It was found in her tomb accompanied by a grave goods of weapons, which indicates that she could have been an Iberian queen.

With this discovery, the experts decided to analyse the sediments that may have remained stuck in the hollow of the Dama de Elche, and apparently they found a pleasant surprise. Apparently the ashes have been preserved all this time, because when they were deposited in it they were still hot, this heat melted part of the gypsum that composes it and it remained vitrified.

What is striking is that the multitude of ornaments and jewellery that they wore have not been found with their grave goods, apparently objects that would have been passed down from generation to generation.

Finally, for those who didn't already know, the Dama de Elche turned out to be a funerary urn and as for its exuberant beauty, it may have been magnified too much, but I think it is very beautiful...

What do you think?

Elena Noguera, MARQ guide at La Illeta

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PERMANENT EXPOSURE

The first thing we will be able to enjoy again

Port Atp 0505 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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TECHNICAL AREAS

The cellars of the Marq

Port guide 2305 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Hello to all of you!

Today I am going to take you on a tour of the MARQ's basements, a key work and research area for the proper functioning of the museum. In the technical work areas located in this space, some of the most important functions for the day-to-day running of the museum are carried out. It could be said that thanks to the tasks carried out by our technical team, the exhibition area "visible" to the public functions perfectly. The museum currently offers a guided tour of the basement once a week, visiting five rooms in this immense working area located in the basement of the building.

The first room to be visited is the Admissions and Departures area, an office area where management tasks related to the reception and departure of pieces from our immense collection of archaeological objects are carried out. All the pieces that the MARQ accumulates in its collections pass through these offices; it could be said that it is the backbone of the entire collection of our museum. From these offices the volumes of the different excavations carried out by the MARQ's team of archaeologists, the forms for the internal movement of pieces, the volumes with the catalogued and inventoried pieces of our permanent collection and all documentation relating to the temperature and humidity control of the museum's rooms are managed and kept in safekeeping. At the end of this area there is a desalination bath to remove the salt from the pieces found in underwater surveys, such as amphorae found in shipwrecks resting on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

The next room that can be visited on the guided tour is the Amphorae, a storeroom with around 900 pieces, most of which are amphorae from different cultures (mainly Roman) that were given or donated by former collectors to the Provincial Archaeological Museum mainly during the 20th century. All these pieces have been catalogued and inventoried, so they all have a label with the corresponding code assigned by the museum's technicians. In addition to the amphorae, we can find pieces of incalculable archaeological value such as the two grain storage silos found in the huts of the Neolithic phase of La Illeta (El Campello), an Iberian mill dating from the 5th-4th century BC, the remains of a Punic cistern found in the Tossal de Manises (Lucentum) or a wonderful Iberian jar with an impressive Elche - Archena style decoration.

The third room to visit on this tour is the Collections Cabinet, also known as the visitable storeroom. This room is used for scientific meetings, practical classes for the Master's Degree in Archaeology at the University of Alicante and even researchers who request access to the basement of the museum can access these rooms to work and research any of the pieces in our collections. Apart from the office area of this room, we have an incredible exhibition with nearly 9,000 pieces divided by stages from Prehistoric times to the Contemporary Age.

This "hidden" exhibition is a real delight as it has incredible pieces from the main archaeological sites in the province of Alicante.

The fourth room to visit is the Restoration Laboratory, a very important room for the restoration of pieces from our collection that for some reason have suffered a process of deterioration. The laboratory is staffed by three professionals and from time to time MARQ offers paid scholarships for qualified personnel. In these facilities, thanks to the training of the staff and the facilities of this laboratory, all types of pieces can be restored, regardless of the material and type of object. At the back of the laboratory there is a small photographic studio and an office area with all the documentation relating to the pieces restored to date.

The last area to be visited on the tour is one of the three compact storage rooms in the basement. These rooms are spacious and have several rows of sliding cupboards where thousands of pieces are stored in boxes, sorted according to sites and excavation campaigns. All the pieces that are in the compact storage rooms have previously passed through the Incoming and Outgoing Departures and have been inventoried and catalogued, so that all the information relating to these pieces is inserted in the museum's database.

In short, a tour of the MARQ's basements is a unique opportunity to experience first-hand the work that goes on down there, a task that helps the entire exhibition and visitable part of our museum to function perfectly, so I invite you to get to know this hidden gem of our marvellous museum when all this happens!

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide.

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THEMATIC ROOMS

Digging underwater

Hello everyone!

Today in #QuédateencasaconelMARQ I want to analyse with you one of the thematic rooms belonging to the permanent exhibition, in my humble opinion, the most impressive of the MARQ.
This is a reproduction of an underwater archaeological find: a Roman wreck or trading ship sunk near the Portus Ilicitanus or Port of Ilici, in Santa Pola (Alicante).

First of all, I would like to highlight the important role played by the (sometimes undervalued) profession of underwater archaeology, since in addition to facing the impediment of transferring the original ship to the surface, it has to carry out its research and work underwater; thanks to the hard work of all those who carried out this project, a specialised and qualified team from the museum was able to create a magnificent replica on an original scale of the submerged ship, allowing its dissemination, available for all to enjoy.

As I mentioned earlier, it was a vessel intended for trade, manned by two people (enough so that while one could rest, the other manned the helm) and whose main products were oil and wine, transported in amphorae, elongated ceramic vessels.

All this interesting history is embodied in this thematic room, a structure designed with care and in great detail to give the public the most realistic experience possible of the situation experienced by the ship's crew at that time.

Of course, seeing the reaction of the visitors to such a scenography, the overflowing imagination of the children... It makes me feel happy in my job and proud of the effort that is made every day by the MARQ team to make all this possible. I encourage you to stay tuned to our social networks because the contents that we will be uploading soon are very interesting.... You can't miss it!
Greetings ;)

Nerea Cuba. Attention to the public at MARQ

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MIDDLE AGE ROOM

VIDEOS ABOUT THE MIDDLE AGES

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The toys

YouCut_20200521_101551839 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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Hello everybody!

Today I want to talk to you about one of the rooms of the permanent exhibition of the MARQ, the Middle Ages room. This room is divided in two, on the right half we can find objects from the Muslim period and on the left side we can find remains from the Christian period. This is preceded by the fall of the Roman Empire and the Visigothic kingdoms in the previous room. If we look at the display cases we can see that from this fascinating period of no less than ten centuries, we find objects, customs and even constructions, which we see on the panels and audiovisuals, which are familiar to us, as they have survived to the present day. In the following lines I would like to talk about this, about some of the things that have survived to the present day, but focusing on the period of the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.

First of all, let's put ourselves in context. In 711 the Arab-Berbers arrived in the Peninsula from Africa and rapidly occupied part of the territory, including the kingdom of Teodomiro, which occupied part of the present-day province of Alicante and part of Murcia. The conquest of this kingdom was carried out by means of a pact, as the Treaty of Teodomiro or Tudmir was signed in 713 with 'Abd al-'Azīz Ibn Mūsā. This kingdom therefore became part of al-Andalus.

After the conquest of the Muslims and the occupation of the new al-Andalus, they brought with them new customs, a new faith, new products and therefore, due to these new aspects, they changed the lives of the people who inhabited the conquered territory, and many of these aspects have survived to the present day.

Some of these novelties were the new crops, as they brought date palms, citrus fruits such as oranges and lemons, saffron and rice, to mention just a few of the products that reached the Peninsula at this time. These crops were not only important for the economy at that time, but they are still important today, as they are not only typical products of our land, but they have even become gastronomic symbols, as products such as rice and saffron are used to make the most famous dish of the Valencian Community and Spain: Paella. But in order to plant these new products, new agricultural techniques were needed, they brought with them a whole new culture: that of water and with it techniques such as irrigation, which consisted, in a synthesised way, of "taming" or "managing" the water so that it reached the plantation, in fact, this technique is still used today.

Another of the aspects that we owe to the Muslims is the foundation of many cities in present-day Spain and therefore also in the province of Alicante, such as the old quarter of the city of Alicante itself; and even the toponym of this city comes from the Arabic name al-Laqant. Even many of the buildings in the old town have their origins in this period. Like the castle of Santa Barbara, the planning of the streets, narrow and sloping, and even the structures of many of the houses with inner courtyards, and attached to each other.

Something that revolutionised this territory was the faith that they brought with them, Islam, and this was one of the bases of the way of life of these people, as they were guided by their holy book, the Koran. For this reason they built mosques in the cities they founded; in Alicante the great mosque was renovated in the Christian era and what is now the Basilica of Santa Maria was built on top of it. Another typical construction in a Muslim city is the hammam, which used to be next to the mosques, as these baths were used to purify themselves before entering the mosque. Another of the aspects that influenced this religion is the decorative motifs, and we can see this very well in the ceramics that we find in the room. In these we see different decorative motifs such as epigraphs, using fragments of the Qur'an, geometric and vegetal motifs, and we even see the glazing technique in many of these ceramics, but we do not find anthropomorphic motifs. This is because Islam outlawed idols, and in the 9th century Mutazilid theology introduced iconophobia, so that for a long period of time the depiction of animate beings was outlawed, even in secular art and books. This ban put an end to the Umayyad iconic tradition.

Many of these decorative traditions have not only embellished many of Spain's cities for centuries in the sight of later generations, as for example in the Alhambra in Granada, which was even used by Christian monarchs. But these motifs and glazing are still used in the current craft tradition, and the use of tiles has even survived, playing a fundamental role in many of our houses.

With all this we see that many of the objects, products and traditions that we use today, and even some of the symbols of our community, come from this time and were brought from distant lands.

If you want more information about Alicante remember #quedateencasaconelmarq

See you soon,

Davinia Llopis, MARQ guide.

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MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Hello everybody!

In today's #yomequedoencasaccasaconelMARQ, I would like to talk about the importance of medicine and its advances during the Middle Ages.

Within this period we should speak, on the one hand, of folk medicine based on old knowledge and remedies, and on the other hand, of knowledge originally studied and practised by monks and later in universities.

The first type corresponds to illnesses derived from superstitions passed down from generation to generation. The illnesses themselves ranged from the most minor, such as a sneeze or menstruation, to others of greater severity that could even end in death or leave a mark on the person, such as physical deformities at birth.

Such was their importance that they tried to eradicate them at all costs. Any illness, now catalogued, was said to be the result of an evil eye, divine punishments, possessions or bewitchments. This was the case of those women who were considered "witches" just because they were hunched over or had warts, and who, for that reason alone, were considered a threat to society.

In the case of scientific medicine, it has its origins in Greece, specifically with Galen and his "theory of humours", based on the idea that the human body is made up of four basic substances known as humours, which must be kept in perfect balance in order to avoid all kinds of illnesses of both body and spirit.

The Arabs were the first culture to translate and interpret Hellenistic knowledge between the 8th and 9th centuries AD, and from the 10th century onwards they developed their own medicine without losing sight of the ideas of Greek physicians.

In the case of the Christians, they also followed this Greek influence and it was the monks who were in charge of the healing practice, which included their knowledge of medicinal plants. The monks had to treat any sick person who needed their help, especially the poorest of the poor, so their work was essentially charitable. The monasteries were therefore places where clinical knowledge was studied and transmitted, until the emergence of the universities.

Apart from the monasteries, we have evidence of hospitals from medieval times, which gained importance in the late Middle Ages when the confraternities were responsible for their management, replacing the clergy, who had scarce economic resources. However, these hospitals continued with this charitable and religious work because, for the most part, they were full of the most disadvantaged people.

In terms of advances in medicine, although there are numerous elements to highlight, some of them arrived with some delay in Europe or even in Spain. Apart from hospitals, in this period we will find, of Arab origin, pharmacies, the notions of ophthalmology and ophthalmology; of European origin, the first universities, the caesarean section, glasses, anatomy and dissection, among others.

But perhaps one of the most important advances within this framework was the initiative to quarantine. This last idea came about, as is well known at this time, as a result of the severe Black Death that occurred in 1348.

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide.

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MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ROOM

Videos from the Modern and Contemporary Ages

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YouCut_20200430_103318022 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Society in the 19th and 20th centuries

Port guia 0606 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

The Principal Theatre of Alicante

Port guia 0406 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

The bourgeoisie

Port guia 0805 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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The history of the Marq

Port guia 1805 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

The arrival of the Railway

Port guia 1405 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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The arrival of the railway in Alicante

Hello everybody!

In today's post in #quedateenelmarq, I would like to talk about the arrival of the railway in Alicante, and what this innovation meant for the city.

At the beginning of the 19th century, travellers complained that the roads in the province of Alicante were few and poor, despite having the best port in Spain. It was therefore paradoxical that more had not been invested in providing better communications in a province rich in major products.

At this time, there were at least four access roads to our city: along the coastal area, another inland, in the south through the Vega Baja region and, finally, the most important, the one that ran through the Vinalopó region, where the roads to Valencia and Madrid divided.

One of the first proposals was that of "La Compañía de María Cristina" in 1844, with the aim of implementing the railway in Alicante, but the necessary financing to carry it out was not obtained.

In 1851, after the inauguration of the line linking Madrid with Aranjuez, a concession was promoted to allow the route from Aranjuez to Alicante, although this was not possible either, being postponed until the following year.

In 1852, the concession for the Almansa to Alicante line was obtained thanks to José Viudes, Marquis of Ríoflorido, and the Compañía del Ferrocarril de Almansa a Alicante (Almansa to Alicante Railway Company) was founded. This company was made up of the Alicante bourgeoisie and municipal and provincial institutions, as well as some Catalan investors.

Unfortunately, however, when the statutes and regulations of the Society had already been obtained, it suffered a financial crisis that led to the transfer of all rights to José de Salamanca, its largest shareholder, on the condition that the work would be completed within the specified time and that the money invested would be reimbursed to the other partners.

It was not until 1856 when the Compañía de Ferrocarriles de Madrid a Zaragoza y Alicante (MZA) carried out the railway project to our city. The first journey will cover the route from Almansa to Alicante, which will take seventeen hours.

However, the official inauguration will take place on 25 May 1858, coinciding with a royal trip to Alicante by Queen Isabella II.

The city prepared for this event and the Provincial Council appointed a commission to go to France to order all the objects and ornamental treatments for the Queen's reception and which were suitable for covering the areas of the city that were to be visited by the royal family.

In short, the arrival of the railway to the city of Alicante will mean the opening of communication routes to other provinces and the capital of the country, as well as the enlargement of the city and the creation of monumental buildings.

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide

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WOMEN'S FASHION IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Hello everybody!

In today's post on #quedateencasaconelMARQ, I would like to talk about the change in women's clothing from the 19th century onwards.

The evolution of fashion during the 19th century was of great importance, in which we must highlight the variety of typologies and styles that developed, as well as the social and stylistic background that can be intuited through fashion. In this sense, we must speak, perhaps, of four periods in the world of women's textiles.

To explain the first of the periods we must mention political events that took place at the beginning of the 19th century. During this period we witnessed the War of Independence against France, led by Napoleon Bonaparte.
In this area, the dress of women in high society, particularly the bourgeoisie, changed radically as a result of these political ideas and French liberties.

The first of the dresses to be unveiled will be the Empire dress, thanks to Josephine Bonaparte, Napoleon's wife. This dress will be characterised by being a one-piece, inspired by Neoclassicism, lacking the hollower that gave volume to the skirt and without the need for a bodice, typical of previous centuries.

This type of dress was inspired by Classical Antiquity due to the number of pleats and the shape of the fabric on the body. It was also adorned with ribbons, braid, silk ribbons and jewellery. In the case of the nobility, women also wore decorations.

The hairstyle also retained this classicism based on curls on the forehead and near the ears, and tied in a knot or bun at the nape of the neck; they also used to be adorned with ribbons or tiaras and feathers in ceremonial costumes. From the 1820s onwards, the style of the updo changed, with the hair parted in two and curled over the ears, and a hat or bonnet was used for going out in the street.

During the reign of Ferdinand VII and Maria Cristina, the dress returned to a certain cut reminiscent of the 18th century, in which the waist was marked, the sleeves were puffed out, and the corset, numerous petticoats and petticoats, elements clearly reflected by the painters of the period, were once again used. The dresses were usually accompanied by shawls or shawls made of very fine, delicate fabrics.

As for headdresses, they used to wear hats with ribbons that were tied under the chin, but the most common was the so-called capota, which, when tied in the same way as the ribbon hat, took on the shape of a tile.

In the case of Spain, the use of the mantilla and peineta, absent in other countries, was also very important, but which would become very important at specific moments such as Easter Week or bullfighting.

The next step in the world of fashion was linked to another aspect, the theatre. During this century, there was an improvement in the performing arts with the creation of auditoriums and theatres with audiences from the bourgeoisie and the working classes, who looked to the theatre as a form of entertainment and escape. It is in this sphere, and favourable to the upper social classes, that a change in women's dress was observed: the society costume.

This model was essential to attend any social event, such as the theatre, the opera or even balls, where women showed their best clothes in order to guarantee themselves a good husband, or, if she was already married, the purpose was for the husband, whose intention was to show off his wife.

The corset was maintained until the middle of the 20th century, but the dress was made up of two pieces, on the one hand the bodice itself and on the other the skirt itself, made of metal structures to give it volume, visually creating an image of women enclosed in a cage, without forgetting the idea that, from a medical point of view, both the corset and the girdles caused deformities and health problems for the women of the time.

The last of the models for women's dresses would be well into the century and coinciding with the reign of Isabella II when a further change was incorporated. This was characterised by the incorporation of a kind of cushion tied at the waist to give greater volume to the back of the dress, once again providing a modification of the female figure.

One of the painters who notably reflected the dresses of the Elizabethan period was Federico de Madrazo, whose canvases immortalised heraldic embroidery with fleur-de-lis, castles and lions motifs on the dresses.

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide

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THE FAN AS A HISTORICAL REFERENCE

Hello everybody!

The analysis of everyday objects provides us with invaluable information that helps us to better understand the way in which society progresses and changes; instruments and objects from past times that, on occasions, have survived to the present day. This is, for example, the case of the fan, a beautiful piece that represents some of the most outstanding aspects of the elites during the modern and contemporary ages.

A legend places the origin or invention of the fan in the Far East. During the festival of torches, the beautiful Kau-Si, daughter of a rich mandarin, was extremely suffocated by the intense heat given off by the torch she was carrying. Therefore, very boldly, she decided to take off the mask that preserved her privacy and, with a nervous gesture, she waved it in front of her nose, forming a curtain that, besides making her face invisible to the curious - since it was forbidden for men to see it -, cooled the air around her. The bold but clever gesture of the beautiful young woman was imitated by the rest of the ladies accompanying her.

It has been known in Europe since the 16th century, when it was brought from the East by Portuguese sailors and traders, and became an indispensable accessory for women's attire from the 18th century onwards. At first, the fan was a rare and rather expensive object, as it was usually made from high-quality materials such as ivory or tortoiseshell - the shell of a type of sea turtle - and became the exclusive privilege of high society. At that time, they were worn by both sexes; men's models tended to lack a scape - the part of the fabric fan - i.e. they consisted solely of a shaft and were small in size, pocket-sized examples. Women's models, on the other hand, were much larger and more elaborate, with a lavishly decorated landscape.

In addition, there was a great variety and diversity of fans to choose from, as each model was perfectly adapted to one or other moment in life. There were models for both married and single women, others for going out for a walk or attending a funeral, there were also wedding fans... There were even small models designed for upper-class children to wear on certain important occasions.

In the 18th century, a complicated code or "language of the fan" emerged, giving a rather curious use to this type of object. In those days, it was frowned upon for a woman to go to a ball alone, so she had to be accompanied by her mother or a lady-in-waiting, so that they could watch over her behaviour. There were unmarried men at the ball, but it was frowned upon for them to talk, and so this code emerged, making the fan an important amorous ally, used to communicate with suitors and go unnoticed. At the end of the 18th century, manuals were even written that instructed women in this code or "language of the fan": fanning oneself quickly while looking a man in the eye meant that she loved him madly, but if it was done slowly its meaning was the opposite; if the fan was held with both hands it meant "you'd better forget me"; if she rested it on her open chest it meant that she loved him; if she covered her face with the fan open "follow me when I leave"...

In the Modern and Contemporary Age Room we can find several incredible examples but, personally, I consider the most exceptional piece to be the "fan of the applied faces" or "thousand faces", a typology that was imported from the East. Specifically, the piece comes from the Philippines, dates from the mid-19th century and is so called because they used to depict scenes of everyday life or mundane life in which a multitude of characters appeared; hence the nickname of the "thousand faces". In terms of their characteristics, the exquisite use of mother-of-pearl on the faces of the figures and silk on their dresses, the high quality of the drawings and the wands, etc., are particularly noteworthy.

Therefore, the fan becomes an invaluable testimony for archaeology and history, as it shows us certain uses and customs of aristocrats and bourgeois, through which we can get a little closer and better understand the processes of change and transformation that society underwent throughout the modern and contemporary ages.

I hope you found the article interesting.

Greetings.

Maripaz Gadea, MARQ guide.

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THE ORIGIN OF THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY IN ALCOY

Hello everybody!

In today's post in #quedateencasaconelMARQ, I would like to talk about the industrialisation process in the Valencian Community, more specifically, in the city of Alcoy.

Industrialisation, broadly speaking, is a process of constant change and continuous growth, involving techniques through machines, theoretical discoveries, capital and social transformations, accompanied by a renewal of agriculture, which allows the displacement of part of the peasant masses to the cities. This took place in the second half of the 18th century in England and later spread to other European nations.

But when did Spain enter the industrial world? Spain underwent a long period of change, from the beginning of the 18th century to the first decades of the 19th century. To this question we must add that Spain's economic growth would be very limited due to its agrarian nature, dependent on the commercialisation of its goods and its dependence on the American colonies. It would therefore be a very slow process.

The national economy lacked investment capital and energy sources. Nevertheless, the construction of railways was relaunched, albeit belatedly. Naval transport incorporated the technological advances of steam and companies were founded.

Although most of the mining industry was taken over by foreign capital, the textile, chemical and electrical industries were promoted. In any case, although belated, the industrial drive bore fruit with a general economic boom that laid the foundations for a modern industry.

With regard to the subject that concerns us, Alcoy has had optimal factors, since long ago, for an industrial process to take place, the banks of the river Molinar being one of the most favourable areas for this.

Since the 14th century, the use of water for manufacturing activities has already been observed, and in 1310 mills for fulling mills (textile machines for transforming fabrics) began to be built, and in later centuries, more than 50 flour mills were also built. However, the great transformation took place in the second half of the 18th century when the fulling mills were transformed into paper mills, which generated the production of 60% in the Kingdom of Valencia.

During this century it also became a large textile company, as can be seen in 1723 as a consequence of the royal policies of the Nueva Planta when the Fábrica de Paños, a guild association, became the Real Fábrica de Paños when it manufactured fabrics for the military uniforms of the Royal Army.

The factors that favoured this industrial process were: the pre-industrial conditions in farm management, the human factor, innovation and quality of artisan or manufacturing production; and finally, the availability of capital to invest in industry, as well as the transformation of flour mills into textile and paper mills. As a curious fact, it was in Alcoy where dyes were obtained during the 15th century, which until now had only been controlled by the Florentines, and where high quality paper was obtained.

To these factors we can add one more technological factor, the means of communication. These, although already relatively good, improved with the arrival of the railway and the construction of national roads, linking Alcoy with other more important towns and cities, such as Valencia.

In later periods, the international situation of both war periods (First and Second World War) and the isolationism of Spain meant that the industry was not affected. It was later, from 1960 onwards, when the textile industry went into decline, at which time new textile materials were introduced for which the Alcoy machines were not prepared and, furthermore, there was no sign of innovation in the industry of El Molinar.

The textile crisis in Alcoy worsened during the eighties and despite the little help the sector received, the new industrial model was adapted, allowing this city to continue to be an important textile centre in the Valencian Community.

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide

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AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA

Hello everybody.

Today in #quedateencasaconelmarq I would like to talk to you about some relevant aspects related to agriculture and industry during the modern and contemporary age.

Until well into the 19th century, the economy of practically all the territories of the province of Alicante was based mainly on traditional subsistence agriculture. Gradually, however, over the course of the 19th century and the following century, modernisation took hold and brought about a drastic improvement in agriculture, changes which radically transformed the appearance of the landscape of the huertas (market gardens). The invention of machines not only improved and facilitated the performance of numerous agricultural tasks, but also in other areas, such as textiles and shoemaking. On the other hand, however, industrialisation also generated a strong social movement, Luddism, which was based on opposition to the introduction of modern machinery into the production process, since the work that many people did was taken over by these machines, leaving them without any means of subsistence.

Alicante took a long time to start its industrialisation compared to other countries.However, little by little, an industry was born and flourished in different regions and territories of Alicante, where the textile and paper industry in the regions of l'Alcoià, the footwear industry in the Vinalopó valley, the toy industry in Ibi, Dénia and Onil, the chocolate industry in Villajoyosa and the nougat industry in Jijona stand out.

THE TURRÓN
In the case of nougat, it was first made in the 16th century in Jijona. The custom of eating nougat at Christmas was already widespread in the 17th century, at least among the wealthy classes. The nougat industry was born in the 19th century and it was at the beginning of the 20th century that it began to be exported to Latin American markets. In the past, the marketing and sale of the product was the responsibility of the manufacturer himself; once the product had been made, he had to transport it by means of wooden crates on the backs of mules to the points of sale. He used to travel initially to towns near Jijona on special dates, such as fairs and pilgrimages, the days leading up to Christmas, local festivals, etc., and, finally, he displayed them in mobile sales outlets known as 'paraetes'.

THE ICE

Another curious subject is related to the production of ice. In the past, mountain snow was held in high esteem, as it was commonly used for many purposes, such as reducing fever or inflammation, cutting haemorrhages, preserving food, making ice cream... The consumption of snow became popular in Spain in the 16th century, but its greatest splendour came in the 18th and 19th centuries. Before the appearance of ice factories and refrigerators, artificial snow pits were used, pits dug in the ground with retaining walls and even a roof, which had openings for the introduction of the snow.

Although snowfields were already known in Roman times, their great development took place between the 16th and 19th centuries. Work on the snow pits began in spring, after the last snowfalls. First, the snow was cut with sticks and transported to the pits, where it was pressed into ice. In summer, it was cut into blocks that were transported on the backs of draught animals (horses or donkeys) during the night, to prevent it from melting, to the nearest ports or urban centres where it was sold. The storage of snow gave rise to the profession of the "gelaor", who distributed the ice in summer to make refreshments and preserve meat, fish, fruit... Finally, about a hundred years ago, with the revolution in the ice industry brought about by the artificial production of cold, the snow deposits fell into disuse and were gradually abandoned.

In Alicante, the Cava Gran de Agres stands out, a protected cultural asset, catalogued as an Asset of Local Relevance by the Generalitat Valenciana, which is located on a hillside of the peaks of the Sierra de Mariola, in the Sierra Mariola Natural Park, under the supervision of its Governing Board and which was recently consolidated, restored and musealised, with the aim of making it known and enhancing its value, included in the network of Sites and Monuments managed by the MARQ (National Museum of Monuments and Archaeological Sites). It is one of the largest and best preserved snowfields in the Aitana, Carrasqueta and Mariola mountain ranges. If you want to know more about this curious place, you can watch the video below:

AGRES CAVE from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Maripaz Gadea, MARQ guide.

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THE FORMER HOSPITAL OF SAN JUAN DE DIOS

Hello to all of you!

Today in #yomequedoencasaconelmarq I am going to write a post about the history of the building where the MARQ is currently located, the old Provincial Hospital San Juan de Dios in Alicante, designed by the Alicante architect Juan Vidal Ramos, who was the architect of much of Alicante's architectural heritage of the twentieth century.

The history of the hospital institution of "San Juan de Dios" dates back to the XIV century, after passing through several headquarters over the centuries, at the beginning of the XX century the Diputación de Alicante approved a project for the construction of a new hospital centre as the city had grown at the end of the XIX century and a larger and more modern building and facilities were required for the care of the sick. The land chosen for the construction of the new hospital was located in the Plà del Bon Repós neighbourhood. Work began in the 1920s and the architect in charge of designing the building was Juan Vidal Ramos, the author of other important buildings in the city of Alicante such as the Carbonell House, the Central Market and the Alicante Provincial Council Palace itself. Although the hospital had been partially functioning since 1930, it was finally inaugurated in 1931. During the years of the Civil War (1936 - 1939), a large part of the centre was transformed into a Military Hospital. The Hospital functioned as such until 1991, at which time the Hospital San Juan de Dios closed its doors due to the fact that, progressively, the health resources were integrated into the Valencian Health Service dependent on the Generalitat Valenciana, with the transfer of powers in this area from the State to the Autonomous Communities, with new hospitals, outpatient clinics and clinics appearing in more central areas of the city.

At the end of the 1990s, the Alicante Provincial Council began an exhibition project to house the collection of the Provincial Archaeological Museum, which at that time was located on the ground floor of the Alicante Provincial Council Palace, in the old Hospital building in the Plà neighbourhood. This project saw the light of day in the year 2000, when the renovated Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante was partially inaugurated in the old hospital building, a process that culminated definitively on 28 May 2002 with the opening to the public as we know it today. Queen Sofía, thus becoming one of the first museums of the 21st century to opt for the renovation of the traditional exhibition system, incorporating a wide variety of didactic and audiovisual resources to bring the rich archaeological heritage of our lands to everyone.

Architecturally, the building has the classic hospital structure of the first half of the last century. Following a scheme of rigid axial symmetry, the plan of the building is structured around a main axis with eight pavilions (four on each side) and two heads located at the ends of the main axis. From an ornamental point of view, a classical language was used, incorporating balustrades, arches of different origins, staircases and pinnacles, making it one of the most beautiful and emblematic buildings in the city of Alicante.

The museum is currently divided into two large exhibition areas on the ground floor of the building. The permanent collection is located in the pavilions on the right-hand side, where women were formerly hospitalised, and the temporary exhibition area on the left-hand side, an area reserved for men during the hospital's history. In the central axis we find the thematic rooms dedicated to the archaeological method, where the operating theatres used to be. In the final part of the building, we find the museum library (the old hospital chapel), one of the most beautiful and spectacular areas of this building full of history and tradition for the city of Alicante.

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide

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THE PORT OF ALICANTE

Hello to all of you!

Today in #yomequedoencasaconelmarq I am going to talk about the important role played by the port of Alicante during the Modern and Contemporary Ages. Its activity was decisive in the expansion of the city and from the time of Alfonso X "the Wise", it became one of the most important ports, thanks to its commercial activity, in the Spanish Levant.

Following the granting of the title of city to the town of Alicante by King Ferdinand "the Catholic" in 1490, the port of Alicante experienced a growth in commercial activity that was key to the urban and economic development of the city during the Modern Age, as the chronicle of Viciana (chronicler of the Kingdom of Valencia) indicates in the 16th century. From that time onwards, Alicante became a major commercial and port city in the Mediterranean area. During these centuries, exports consisted of local products such as sultanas, dried fruits, esparto grass, salt and wine. The port also received products from different parts of Europe, mainly Italy and the Netherlands. In the second half of the 18th century and at the dawn of the Contemporary Age, the port of Alicante was allowed to trade directly with America, thus becoming the most important port in the Spanish Levant at that time.

In the Modern and Contemporary Age room of the MARQ we can find various objects from this commercial activity in the port of Alicante, including a smoking pipe of Dutch origin, various items of Italian crockery (plates, cups, jugs) and various fans of different origins, one of them from the Philippines dating from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which shows the taste of the Alicante bourgeoisie at that time for the exotic and the oriental.

In short, the port of Alicante was a key driving force for the economic and urban development of the city, and of course, today it continues to be a very important sign of identity for Alicante, as since the dawn of history, trade has been one of the key elements for the development of all the civilisations that have followed one another in our lands.

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide.

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PREHISTORIC ROOM

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Maqbara

Port guia 0506 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

The Bulls of Argar

YouCut_20200522_112407353 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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Hello everybody!

Today in #QuédateencasaconelMARQ I would like to talk about the importance, in my opinion, of the Prehistory room in the permanent collection of the MARQ.

The Prehistory room is very attractive for all audiences; all the knowledge it presents, together with the distribution of the pieces puts you in context, taking you back to that time, and thus understanding the way of life and resources of our ancestors.

In this room we can learn and discover very interesting information, such as, for example, who were the inhabitants who constituted the first human occupation in Europe, as well as what their habitat was. It also reveals the subsistence model of the population through hunting, fishing and the gathering of fruits and vegetables.

One piece that I would like to highlight in this room is the cardial vase. It comes from the Cova de l'Or (Beniarrés, Alicante), located on the Mediterranean coast where the first agricultural and livestock farming communities developed in our area. I find its decoration very striking, as it represents the first pottery to appear in our lands, associated with the new Neolithic production economy.

I hope you will soon be able to visit us and enjoy the MARQ and this magnificent permanent collection.
We are waiting for you!

Cristina González, MARQ customer service.

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Hello everybody!

In today's publication, I would like to talk to you about the Palaeolithic, covering the most general aspects of this period, but also focusing on the findings in the caves of the Levant of the Iberian Peninsula.

Human evolution has been a long process that began in Africa some five million years ago, with the Australopithecus, which evolved into the genus Homo, with the Ergaster being the first to leave Africa a little over 1,500,000 years ago and spread to the Near East and Asia.

In Europe, the first hominids appeared approximately one million years ago, spread across the southernmost areas of the continent, including the Iberian Peninsula, as temperatures in the northern lands were very low and the scarcity of food made survival difficult.

Although on a peninsular level, we have numerous evidences of all the stages of this period (Lower, Middle and Upper), it will be from the second stage onwards when we find the presence of human and lithic remains in the Valencian Community.

The first signs of activity can be found in Cova Bolomor (Tavernes de la Valldigna, Valencia), Cova Negra (Xàtiva, Valencia) and El Salt (Alcoy, Alicante), although their development or evolution is not the same in all sites.

Perhaps the Cova Negra (Xàtiva) is the most important because of the large amount of material found, making clear the absolute control of the work on stone and the contact with other nearby groups that lived in Cova Parpalló (Gandía) and Malladetes (Barx), located 20 km away. At this site, it is possible to study how the group behaved in relation to their main source of resources, hunting, in which they monitored the herds and then selected the prey before killing it.

We also know that the occupation was frequent, but not continuous, as at the El Salt site (Alcoy), although at the latter we have the presence of human remains, specifically five pieces of teeth corresponding to a relatively young Neanderthal man.

With respect to the Upper Palaeolithic, the new inhabitants, groups of Homo sapiens, were well acquainted with working with bone, preferably making awls or awls from antler, and as this period progressed, they perfected their lithic technique. As far as the place of settlement is concerned, the choice of habitat will not be the result of chance, but will be conditioned by the ease of obtaining resources, and their permanence there, despite being a nomadic society, should be understood as a possibility of making the most of them. Furthermore, it was at this time that the first manifestations of rock art, already mentioned in a previous publication, began to develop, making these places into veritable sanctuaries.

More numerous archaeological evidence can be found in Alicante and Valencia, especially in the regions of Marina Alta and La Safor, respectively, which have been highly inhabited areas due to high levels of rainfall, varied ecosystems, caves and coastal plains that favour transhumance and the existence of animals such as horses. Clear examples are places like Cova de les Cendres (Moraira, Alicante), which has 25,000 years of human occupation during the Palaeolithic and Neolithic, and whose pieces are exhibited in the MARQ, from ceramics to flint harpoons.

But, within the latest research on the way of life in this period, I would like to talk about the Cova del Comte (Pedreguer, Alicante), as it allows, once again, to ensure the natural wealth that our province offered to these early inhabitants. Making a brief mention of the art of the time, this place, according to archaeologists and researchers, is the only one that combines engravings with paintings prior to the macro-schematic art, included in the declaration of World Heritage of Humanity of the Mediterranean Arc Cave Art since 1998.

In addition to the paintings, projectiles, tools for working skins and butchering meat, as well as a large number of animal bones have been found. All these elements make it possible to determine that they led a balanced life dedicated to hunting and gathering, as well as the ability to adapt to the environment.

In conclusion, it could be said that, during this long period, they did not develop large settlements due to their nomadic way of life and, therefore, they were conditioned by climatic factors and the scarcity of resources, but in spite of this, they knew how to make the most of natural resources and perfect them to the maximum, establishing, in many cases, lithic industry workshops.

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide.

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A world of stone

One of the first materials that come to mind when we imagine what life was like in prehistoric times is undoubtedly stone. Its importance throughout time is unquestionable. In fact, we have abundant evidence of its use in the construction and manufacture of tools for everyday use, but there are also parallels that demonstrate its use in contemporary times.

Inside Room 1 of the MARQ, we can enjoy numerous examples of the archaeological record made on stone, with flint standing out above any other lithic support. This is a very hard material made mainly of silica. Unlike others, it breaks relatively easily, generating sharp edges after its fracture, which can be used for puncturing, cutting surfaces and even lighting fires.

The Illeta dels Banyets hut, documented within the 4th millennium BC settlement, contains evidence of flint carving. In addition to these clues, we can add the discovery of a kind of anvil associated with numerous blades from which arrowheads would have been extracted.

The discovery makes sense in a space that also includes pottery (two terracotta containers) and malacofauna; objects that together would confirm the character of the
supposedly seasonal settlement.

Stone never goes out of fashion!

Anabel Castro

#andI'monetheMarq

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Hello!

In today's post I would like to talk to you about the didactic approach of our museum rooms, more specifically, the Prehistory Room.

There are many schools and associations that visit the MARQ throughout the year, and the age range is very wide, so the level of attention or curiosity of each one varies as we move through the rooms.

In general terms, for this historical period, the room dedicated to Prehistory has a series of panels that mark the evolution of our territory from the Palaeolithic to the Metal Age. From these panels we can highlight the way of life, the customs, the activities that were carried out, therefore, they allow us to accompany, in a better way, the explanations that as guides we give to the visitors, as well as to understand the pieces that they can contemplate in the showcases of the room. In addition, there are two audiovisuals in the room, one on cave paintings and the other on ceramics and technology, which complement the information.

Focusing on my experience as a guide, it is very difficult to make a standard visit for all visitors as there is a great variety of groups, ages and ways of approaching knowledge, which is why we must adapt our explanations to the needs of each group.

In this article I would like to focus on the youngest members of the household, the schoolchildren, who visit us every day and who, therefore, need to have a more interactive and entertaining experience. In my case, I always try to focus on those aspects that allow, to put it colloquially, more play and allow them to participate. For this reason, I would like to highlight two moments in the visit in which they, both younger children and teenagers, put their knowledge and even their imagination to the test. This is the case of the recreation of the macro-schematic painting of the Pla de Petracos site in the town of Castell de Castells in Alicante, which can be seen in the apse of the room. After some previous guidelines, they are the ones who describe the representation, the material used and are even able to give an interpretation, sometimes approximate, sometimes not so much, of the meaning of this cave painting included in the catalogue of World Heritage by UNESCO since 1998, together with all the cave art of the Mediterranean arc.

The second moment that I would like to highlight, and which attracts the attention of our youngest friends, is the burials. Perhaps, it is one of the aspects that most remain with them when they have finished their visit to the room, as well as being a didactic resource to highlight, it also allows them to explain other concepts such as grave goods and their functionality in the prehistoric way of life. Therefore, I believe that the MARQ, and specifically this room, allows the youngest visitors to put themselves in the shoes of our ancestors.

Another of the resources that the museum offers us are the reproductions of archaeological pieces that we can find in the access corridor to the permanent exhibition rooms. These "touchable" resources have a very important function: accessibility, that is, to bring history closer to people with special needs, whether auditory or visual, among others.

Accessibility, which is very important at MARQ, allows any visitor to have access to the exhibitions and workshops that it programmes and carries out. Not only do we have exhibition tables, but also QR codes, a sign language interpreter, as well as didactic guides in Braille and easy-to-read texts. This great work carried out by the Didactics Unit of the Foundation makes it possible for these adapted programmes to reach everyone.

I hope you enjoyed this article, see you soon at MARQ...In the meantime, #quedateencasaconelMARQ

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide.

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Hello everybody!

Today I am going to talk to you about the techniques and pigments used by prehistoric societies to make cave paintings, analysing the different styles used.

The first artistic manifestations date back to the Palaeolithic, and in this period we find a series of manifestations encompassed within Palaeolithic art, in this style there are several techniques: engraving: carried out by chopping with a hammer or incising or scratching the surface with stone cutting instruments (flint burins); and painting applied using a brush, the hands themselves or by airbrushing (blowing the paint with tubes as if it were an airbrush, thus obtaining figures in negative). The prevailing colours in Palaeolithic painting are red and black. In the province of Alicante we only know of 4 places with Palaeolithic art, even so we can find examples of engraved and painted figures. One example is the Cova Fosca (Vall d'Ebo), a Palaeolithic sanctuary, where we find different figures made by engraving, in fact in the MARQ we have a replica of a panel with the engraved figures found there. On the other hand, an example of this type of art painting can be found in the Cova de Reinós, also in Vall d'Ebo, where there is a single painted motif, a goat with a bulging belly.

The Palaeolithic period was followed by the Neolithic, a period marked by a series of changes, which led to a complete change in people's lives, thanks to agriculture and livestock farming. At this time we also see a change in cave paintings and the origin of various artistic styles, which we will list below.

Macro-schematic art, this is the art of the first farmers who arrived in the lands of Alicante in the middle of the 6th millennium BC. This art is exclusive to the mountainous area of the north of the province of Alicante, although in recent years it has also been found in the bordering areas of the province of Valencia. The technique used to create this style is painting, using dark red pigments, leaving a dense and thick mixture, and it was applied with thick brushes or with the fingers, resulting in thick strokes. A magnificent example of macro-schematic art is to be found at Pla de Petracos (Castell de Castell), where there is an extraordinary collection of paintings spread over six shelters forming a natural altarpiece on the spectacular rock face. In the prehistoric room there is a replica of the V shelter in this place.

Levantine art is another of the styles of this period and is contemporary to Macro-Schematic and Schematic art. Unlike the aforementioned style, this one has a wider geographical spread as it extends along the eastern façade of the Iberian Peninsula, from the Pyrenees to Almería and Jaén. Levantine art can be defined as a narrative and naturalistic style. The technique used is red paint applied with a very fine brush. First the outline and silhouette of the figure is drawn and then it is filled in totally or partially. The most representative place in the province of Alicante for this art is perhaps La Sarga (Alcoy). Here we find a scene of Levantine hunting with several archers and deer in Coat I on some macro-schematic figures.

Last but not least, we find in this period the Schematic art. Its origin dates back to the Ancient Neolithic period and lasts until the Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC). It covers the whole of the Iberian Peninsula and some areas of Western Europe. As the term itself suggests, schematic art is characterised by the simplification of figures. The technique used is red, yellowish-ochre and black paint, with an irregular-edged outline and, only in some cases, with a well-defined outline. A significant example of Schematic art is the group from Cabeço d'Or (Relleu), where we can see three idols with oculated eyes and facial tattoos, arms in two cases in the shape of a cross with marked fingers and in the other in the shape of a handle, resting on the waist.

Once we have seen the different styles and the techniques used to make them, this makes us ask ourselves a question: how did they make the different pigments in order to obtain the characteristic colours of the paintings that were made in those prehistoric periods?

To obtain the white colours, which are rarely used, but are found above all in paintings found in funerary contexts, such as in the tholos of Montelirio (Seville), they were made from mica and kaolin. The black colour was obtained using mineral and vegetable charcoal. Finally, to obtain red, yellowish and brownish tones, they were made using compounds generally of iron oxides and hydroxides (haematite, goethite, limonite, manganese, cinnabar, etc.). These were materials that could sometimes be found in powder form in nature, but in most cases they were usually crushed on stones (mills and mortars), examples of which have been found, such as at Altamira or a fragment of a mill covered with dye and two crushers in the Cova de l'Or (Beniarrés). Once the powder was obtained, it was necessary to create a paste to be applied to the wall, for which the binder was added, which could be animal fat, resin or egg white, although it seems that the most common material used in this case was animal fat.

Once the paste was obtained, it was placed on a palette. Molluscs with remains of pigments have been found in different places, for example in the Cova de la Sarsa (Bocairent) or in the Cova de l'Or (Beniarrés). In addition, barrels or ceramics have also been found with traces of dyes, which would also be used to introduce the mixture, the first case being very useful for carrying it as it has two small handles that would be used to hang it up.

Knowing the different supports where the pigments were introduced, the techniques and how these societies made the dyes, helps us to know a little better these hunter-gatherer societies of the Palaeolithic, and the agricultural and livestock societies of the Neolithic, seeing a unity in the techniques, materials, and supports to be able to express their beliefs and thoughts through art.

If you want to know more about Prehistoric art, here you have the link to some articles and videos related to this topic:

https://arqueologiaalicante.blogspot.com/2011/02/santuario-prehistorico-de-cova-fosca.html.
https://marqalicante-classic-admin.qwair.com/Paginas/es/El-Marq-contado-por-sus-guias-P622-M1.html#yumiq/
https://marqalicante-classic-admin.qwair.com/Paginas/es/El-Marq-contado-por-sus-guias-P622-M1.html#orantes_de_petracos

And remember 1TP5StayNearlywithmarq

Davinia Llopis, MARQ guide.

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Hello everybody!

Today, in #quedateencasaconelMARQ I would like to talk to you about the evolution of burial forms throughout Prehistory.

We do not know exactly when these first burials or our ancestors' concern for their loved ones in the afterlife may have taken place. Throughout the different historical periods, societies have developed very diverse and increasingly complex funerary beliefs and practices in relation to their social and mental structures. In the case of prehistory, it is such a broad period that it is possible to observe a succession of important transformations in social behaviour towards the dead.

The earliest evidence we have belongs to the Middle Palaeolithic in the Near East and some areas of Europe, both in caves and in the open air. They are funerary practices through the rite of burial, which will reach greater importance during the Upper Palaeolithic (32,000 - 9,000 BC), due to the fact that during this first period it is very difficult to affirm that the burials took place under some kind of ceremony or symbolic ritual. In any case, the burials found, most of them in caves, represent a very low number in relation to the entire population existing at that time, which seems to indicate that the most common burial was another burial, probably in the open air, which has left hardly any traces.

In the Neolithic, thanks to changes in the way of life and in their economy, they encouraged demographic growth and with them, the creation of the first important villages and the large cemeteries, located outside the settlements. These were usually sets of individual burial pits, where the skeletons were laid out in a ritual flexed position. At the end of this period, a new funerary ritual appeared in Europe, mainly in the cultures settled in the Atlantic and European areas. This is the collective burial of corpses, which has been established in society for almost 2,000 years. These collective burials are deposited both in megalithic constructions and in caves, both following the same ritual pattern.

The corpses of men and women of all ages accumulate there over time, sometimes in large numbers (100 or more individuals), accompanied by grave goods consisting of all kinds of objects, from pottery to metal items and ornaments, suggesting a belief in an afterlife. It is through the material remains found in a grave that we can learn about the kinds of lifestyles of the past.

In the mid Bronze Age, there was a return to individual burials. The necropolises of some important settlements from this period, such as those in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula, show skeletons placed separately inside stone cists or large pottery vessels.

This situation lasted until the arrival of the Iron Age with the arrival of Indo-European peoples, who brought the funerary ritual of cremation to our territory. The cremation of corpses implies a different mental background to that of burial, since it is not a question of returning the body to the Earth as in the beliefs of Neolithic agricultural societies (agrarian cycle), but rather, it is seen as a return of the soul to the heights, enveloped in the smoke that rose from the ashes of the mortal body, as proposed by the European celestial religions that began to emerge at this time.

In the case of the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula, specifically with the El Argar culture, cremation rite practices have not yet been carried out. In this way, we must highlight the burials of adults and children, inside the houses, in the subsoil or outside them. All of them, through the practice of burial, and placed in urns, cists or pits.

The human being has been in constant evolution, although we cannot speak of great radical changes or ruptures with previous periods and proof of these are the constant cultural survivals that we can find in archaeological remains. However, there are variations in the burial methods or in the prehistoric societies, reflected in a grave goods of greater or lesser wealth, in many cases due to the natural resources of the geographical area or the presence of a socio-economic, political or religious elite, as mentioned in previous articles. In spite of this, there is a clear idea: funerary rituals allow ideologies to be formalised and mark an identity of their own in the social groups of prehistoric times.

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide.

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Hello friends!

Today, in #quedateencasaconelMARQ, I would like to talk to you about the greatest revolution that, together with the industrial revolution, our species has experienced throughout its history: the Neolithic. But how did it come about, what were its main characteristics, how did it change the way of understanding the world, nature, social relations and the organisation of the different population groups, among themselves and with their environment?

In order to answer these questions we must first understand how our species lived in the Palaeolithic. Homo sapiens arrived in the Iberian Peninsula approximately 40,000 years ago, in the Upper Palaeolithic, a period that extended in our territory until about 7,500 years ago. This was a period in which we had not yet learned to domesticate nature, so our subsistence was based on hunting wild animals and gathering wild fruits and seeds. When resources ran out in the place where they lived, they were forced to choose between two options: to stay and die or to leave and have some chance of survival elsewhere. They were therefore constantly on the move, living as nomads and occupying caves on a seasonal basis. The cave, an ancestral refuge, was a perfect place to take shelter both from animals and from the intense cold they had to face, as we are in the times of the Würm glaciation, a rather complicated time from the point of view of survival, so there were not many of us and life expectancy was very low.

Our species lived in this way for tens of thousands of years, until an event occurred that changed everything: a major climate change. Around 12,000 years ago, our planet gradually began to warm up, bringing the last great ice age to an end. As a result, different places were particularly favoured, such as the Fertile Crescent, a region in Near East Asia shaped like a crescent moon (hence its name), where for the first time humans learned to domesticate both plants and animals. With food secure, it was no longer necessary to wander from place to place in search of sustenance, so our species began to settle in certain places, close to cultivated areas and thus near rivers and lakes, and with agriculture came the first permanent settlements. With this, new needs appeared, to which they had to respond by creating new utensils, such as axes and polished stone adzes for clearing and working the land and wood, ceramic vessels for storing what was produced, the spoon for eating new types of food such as "porridge" made from cereal...

With this new way of life combined with agriculture and ceramics, together with numerous technological advances, a demographic explosion took place and, little by little, these people began to occupy new territories, starting a journey that took them to places as far away as Alicante, where they arrived around 7,500 years ago.500 years ago, settling mainly in valleys and river basins, such as the Vall de la Gallinera or the Ibi-Alcoy Canal (the Cova de l'Or in Beniarrés stands out), and marking out "their territory" with paintings and engravings: sanctuaries where they contemplated and venerated sacred images, where they performed ceremonies to reinforce the cohesion of the group, but also where they symbolically expressed their dominion over the territory against other groups, requesting protection and fertility. Important sites such as La Sarga (Alcoy) and Pla de Petracos (Castell de Castells) stand out.

Therefore, the Neolithic marked a historical milestone, a before and after in the conception by our species of the surrounding territory, initiating an intense process of appropriation and transformation that continues to the present day.
I hope you found it interesting. Best regards.

Mª Paz Gadea, MARQ guide.

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COCENTAINA

Archaeology and museum

Hello to all of you!

We continue with more articles and more archaeology! On this occasion I would like to remember one of the exhibitions that I have most enjoyed guiding, Cocentaina: Archaeology and Museum, an exhibition that allowed us to bring to our museum the rich heritage of this town, a magnificent opportunity to learn about the archaeological and artistic wealth of the capital of the Comtat. This exhibition took place in 2015 and was part of the exhibition cycle of Local and Municipal Museums organised by the MARQ.

The first room of the exhibition covered the periods of Prehistory, the Ancient Ages and the Islamic period of the Middle Ages. The first section of the exhibition, which was dedicated to the first stages of the history of mankind, included archaeological remains belonging to the three stages of Prehistory: Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Metal Age, all these archaeological remains came from the main prehistoric sites in the Comtat region. Regarding the Iberian period, the exhibition offered three showcases with Iberian warrior weaponry, religious votive offerings and ceramic vessels, highlighting the Vas del Guerrer, one of the most exceptional ceramic pieces of the Iberian culture from the very important site of La Comtat.
Serreta (Alcoy - Cocentaina - Penáguila). Regarding the Roman period, the exhibition offered a detailed map with the main rural Roman villas in the Comtat region, and in the apse part of the room the emphasis was on the necropolis of Polisixto, a Late Roman - Visigothic cemetery that was discovered by the Centre d'Estudis Contestans in the 1980s. The panels recreated the different types of burial in the necropolis and the display cases showed various items of glass and vitreous paste grave goods that accompanied the deceased in the tombs. The final section of the first room was devoted to the Islamic period; at the beginning of the 8th century the Muslims began the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, which gave rise to new ways of life after the arrival of the new settlers. It was at this time that Qustantaniya (the seed of the present-day town of Cocentaina) was founded; from this part of the exhibition I would highlight the ceramic Bacin found in the Plaça de Sant Miquel worked with the cuerda seca technique, a fascinating object of Islamic material culture dating from the end of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th century.

The second room went from the Christian conquest of the Islamic territory of Qustantaniya to the Contemporary Age. The first section was dedicated to Cocentaina Castle, built by the House of Llúria (lords of Cocentaina) on the top of the mountain (Cerro de San Cristóbal) that dominated the Christian town. This castle is considered to be one of the few examples of military Gothic architecture in the Valencian Community. In the Modern Age, the town of Cocentaina passed into the hands of the Corella family (nobility of Navarre) and it was at this time that one of the jewels of the town's architectural heritage was built, the Palacio Condal, the seat of the new counts of Cocentaina. Highlights of this section of the exhibition included the coat of arms with heraldic motifs of the Corella family, a model of the Palacio Condal and the altarpiece of Santa Bárbara, one of the jewels of Gothic architecture in our region. The final part of the exhibition was dedicated to the process of industrialisation that the town underwent throughout the Contemporary Age, mainly in the mid-19th century. In the pre-apse and apse of the second and last room of the exhibition, a tribute was paid to the fantastic immaterial and folkloric heritage of the capital of El Comtat, focusing on the Moors and Christians festivities, the famous "Paquito el Chocolatero" pasodoble composed by Gustavo Pascual Falcó and the All Saints Fair, one of the oldest medieval fairs in Spain.

In short, the Cocentaina: Archaeology and Museum exhibition was a unique opportunity for everyone who visited the MARQ to get to know the rich historical, archaeological and artistic heritage of this wonderful town.

Carlos Pérez Soler. MARQ Guide

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PETRER

Archaeology and museum

Petrer, Archaeology and Museum in MARQ

Hello to all of you!

Today I bring you a report on one of the temporary exhibitions that I have most enjoyed guiding, the exhibition organised by the MARQ in collaboration with the Dámaso Navarro Museum in Petrer in 2018. Petrer, Archaeology and Museum was the thirteenth proposal of the exhibition programme "Local and municipal museums in the MARQ". The exhibition aimed to bring the archaeological and heritage legacy (both material and immaterial) of this town in Medio Vinalopó closer to all visitors. It should also be noted that this was the first exhibition to have "Easy Reading" panels to help people with reading difficulties when visiting the exhibition.

The exhibition had a chronological route that went from Prehistory to the Civil War; in the final part of the exhibition there were also elements linked to the craft traditions of the town such as agriculture, pottery or footwear and a part of the second room was reserved to exhibit the intangible heritage, highlighting its festivals and traditions such as the Moors and Christians festivals, the "Carasses" or the Three Kings Cavalcade.

The first room of the exhibition was dedicated to Prehistory, the Ancient Age and part of the Middle Ages under Muslim domination. In the first section of the hall, archaeological remains from the Neolithic and the Metal Age from the main sites in the area, such as Chorrillo Chopo, l'Almorxó and Catí-Foradà, were exhibited. As far as the Iberian period is concerned, archaeological objects from the four Iberian settlements documented in these lands were exhibited. These sites were possibly linked to a much larger settlement in Elda, the Iberian city of Monastil. From the Roman period we have one of the most important remains found in the urban centre of Petrer, the mosaic of
Villa Petraria, which probably decorated a room in the Roman villa that functioned as a place of agricultural and industrial production until the Late Antique period. The final section of the first room was dedicated to the first period of the medieval period under Islamic domination, a key moment in the gestation of the town of Petrer, as the origin of this town is in the Islamic Bitrir which was settled on the southern slope of the hill of the castle of Peter. In the final part of this section there was a 3D model of the castle of Petrer under Islamic domination, ideal for the visitor to get an idea of the primitive appearance of this medieval fortress.

In the second room, we found archaeological objects from the medieval period under Christian domination as well as a model with a recreation of the castle with the reforms carried out by the new Christian settlers. In the Modern Age, the expulsion of the Moors in 1609 was a key event that brought with it important economic and mainly demographic consequences, as Petrer was depopulated and a Town Charter had to be drawn up to establish new settlers in the territory. Finally, one hundred people from other towns in the province of Alicante, such as Jijona, San Vicente, Castalla, Monforte, Agost and Biar, settled in Petrer. As far as the Contemporary Age is concerned, the historical event that the exhibition dealt with the most was the Civil War, as the Republican government (which was located in Valencia) moved to the Poblet estate (Petrer) and remained there until the end of the conflict. Among the exhibits, an anti-aircraft siren and photographs of an industrial footwear area called "La ciudad sin ley" (the lawless city) stand out, as it was transformed into an arms factory for the Republican side during the war.

As a museum guide, it is a pleasure and an honour to be able to learn more about the local heritage of the main towns in our region and to show visitors the incredible archaeological legacy that we have in the province of Alicante.

In the following link, you can enjoy the video that was made especially for the exhibition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl4wTupPPog

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide

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PIECES:

Lady of Cabezo Lucero

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Hello to all of you!

We continue in #quedateencasaconelmarq with more articles and more archaeology. Today it is the turn to write about one of the star pieces in the MARQ's Iberian culture room, the Dama de Cabezo Lucero. This piece presides over the room of the Iberians, a native culture of the Mediterranean coast of our territory that coexisted with the Celtic peoples of the centre-north of the peninsula before the arrival of the Romans to the Iberian Peninsula.

The Lady of Cabezo Lucero was found in the necropolis of the site of the same name, located in the municipality of Guardamar del Segura in 1987. According to studies based on dating and comparisons with other examples of funerary busts from this culture, it dates from the end of the 5th century BC. - first quarter of the 4th century BC. The sculpture was found fragmented and was later reconstructed by Vicente Bernabeu, restorer of the Provincial Council of Alicante in the Provincial Archaeological Museum. Thanks to the expertise and skill of Vicente Bernabeu as a restorer, the sculpture could be reconstructed from a few original fragments, making it one of the most important examples of Iberian statuary in the province of Alicante.

This is a female bust in frontal position wearing clothing and jewellery. She wears a tunic, a diadem, lateral ear-rings and beaded necklaces probably made of vitreous paste. According to the research studies carried out to date, this figure could represent a woman of the aristocracy related to religious power or it could even be the representation of a female divinity within the heterogeneous and orientalised pantheon of Iberian gods. As for its function, it is clear that it is linked to the funerary world, as it was found in the necropolis reserved for the aristocracy of the Iberian settlement of Cabezo de Lucero. If we look at other similar female sculptures of this type, such as the Dama de Elche or the Dama de Baza, it could be a cinerary urn to deposit the ashes of the deceased together with their grave goods or a funerary sculpture to mark a specific area of the necropolis.

The stylistic similarities between the Dama de Cabezo de Lucero and the very famous and exceptional Dama de Elche lead us to think that there may have been a sculptural circle defined in the southern areas of the province of Alicante (the regions of Bajo Vinalopó and Bajo Segura), which would ultimately be a form of artistic expression of a homogeneous cultural environment known in the sources as the Iberian Contestania.

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide.

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PIECES:

Bone idols

Port Guia 0904 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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MONUMENTS

Almudaina Tower

The recovery and opening to the public of the monumental building that constitutes the Almudaina Tower, declared an Asset of Cultural Interest (Bien de Interés Cultural-BIC) with the category of Monument, is recent. Built in the first half of the 13th century, it is one of the many defensive farmhouse towers erected in the eastern region of al-Andalus shortly before the Christian conquest.

Port monu 0104 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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Hello to all of you.

Continuing with some of the curiosities of the Almohad Tower of Almudaina, it must be said that it originally had four levels, which were accessed by ladders from the outside and its steps were embedded in the rammed earth walls. From the 19th century onwards, it became a dwelling and therefore had an additional level.

When the tower was built, its main purpose was defensive, and on the third and fourth upper levels there are a kind of triangle-shaped windows whose widest part would have been on the inside of the walls, opening on the outside with an opening of about 8-10 centimetres. They are called "aspillera" or "tronera" and were specially designed for defence, with the guards standing on the inside with their crossbow fixed on the target. From the outer face to the inner face it was very difficult to hit the target due to its size.

The tower also had a crenellated terrace that gave it great visibility and enabled it to fulfil another of its primary functions, that of communicating with other towers and castles, perfectly aligned, which connected it with the rest of the fortifications that guarded both the inland towns and those on the coast against attacks by land and sea throughout Alicante in the Middle Ages. In the 16th century, the crenellated terrace was replaced by a gabled roof to prevent excess humidity.

Enrique Juan Vidal, MARQ guide at the Almudaina Tower.

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Hello everybody!

One of the details that most impressed me about the Almudaina Tower were two fragments of pottery embedded in the interior façade of its walls, forming part of the walling, which in turn offer us a very important clue as to the century in which it was built (late 12th and early 13th centuries). In addition to this interesting detail, on the first level, and specifically in a quite visible area, there are some diagonal stripes in the form of "marks" that are very close together, which were probably used to count the grain or oil stored or even the passage of time (days, weeks...).

In addition, I would like to highlight the great work carried out by the Diputación and the MARQ in the rehabilitation and enhancement of the Monument, converting the Tower into a Site Museum open to the public since August 2009.

The external access on the second level consists of a steel staircase that forms a kind of belvedere, from which we can enjoy wonderful views. The interior staircase, made of iron, wood and glass, was reconstructed on the site, section by section, giving access to the 4 levels. Both are independent without being anchored to the monument.

Enrique Juan Vidal, MARQ guide at the Almudaina Tower.

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TRACES OF THE MIDDLE AGES

#S Did you know that... The Almudaina Tower has several imprints on its outer façade. It is believed that they were produced by the impact of an object of attack or siege. At the same time, there are linear holes in lines called "mechinales", all of which have a stone in their upper face. This is due to the fact that during the construction phase of the rammed earth walls, they were used to insert the recoverable needles so that they would not be stepped on and could later be extracted.

The entrance on the first level of the monument is also curious. From the outer face of the Tower a rectangle can be seen which hides what appears to be a mysterious entrance. However, it is a revolving door that hides, behind it, the ancient wooden door that appeared in the 16th century, which can only be opened from the inside face, being one of the details that visitors like the most.

Enrique Juan Vidal, guide and MARQ customer service at La Torre de Almudaina.

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1TP5YouKnewWhat... The four corners of the Almudaina Tower correspond exactly to the four cardinal points?

In addition, it is believed that when the tower was built, its first level was used as a cistern for water storage.

It is very important to highlight the hardness of the construction material, reaching pressures of 25 KG/C2. This is due to the excellent quality of the gravel used in the mortar that forms part of the blocks of rammed earth that make up the walls of the tower.

#WhichisincasecolonMARQ

Enrique Juan, MARQ guide at the Almudaina Tower.

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1TP5Did you know that... The 2019 edition of "La Vuelta a España" passed at the foot of the Almudaina Tower?

Here is a photo of the "key moment".

#WhichisincasecolonMARQ

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PIECES:

Crato's Wake

Hello friends!

Today, in #quedateencasaconelmarq, I am going to talk to you about one of the pieces that we can find in room 2 of the temporary exhibition "Idols, Millenary Views" that the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante (MARQ) is currently hosting: The Crato Stela (Alto Alentejo, Portugal).

It is a piece made of granite and decorated in bas-relief, in which we can distinguish two distinct areas, the upper half, in which the face is represented, with an indication of eyes -two simple dots- and a nose -a vertical groove- and the lower half, delimited by a horizontal line below the face, from which three concentric circles emerge which have been interpreted by a large number of researchers as necklaces or decorative elements. Both on the sides and on the upper part of the piece, we can see a network of lines that cross each other, forming a reticulated motif that resembles a net.

The stela was found by chance on a farm in the Portuguese town of Crato (Portalegre), so it is out of context, although there are numerous parallels in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula (Portuguese Alentejo, Extremadura and western Andalusia) that were found linked to an archaeological context and which therefore help us to discern its profound significance. These objects are closely linked to megalithism, with a predominantly funerary connotation, as they are generally found inside collective burials (dolmen and tholos-type structures), in a specific point of the burial chamber, where they received the light of the rising sun every morning, casting its gigantic and imposing shadow over the deceased.

Although these elements are very difficult to interpret and decode from a modern perspective, as they are images and symbols related to the mental structures of prehistoric groups, we can intuit what they were intended to represent and evoke through these artistic manifestations. This type of stelae in particular seem to symbolically represent a being, human or divine, profusely ornamented with necklaces hanging from his chest and with his head adorned with a cloak that also covers part of his body. It is possible that this is a type of clothing linked to a group with an outstanding social and/or spiritual status; in fact, these reticulated motifs remind us of the clothing worn by the "priestesses" of Montelirio, luxurious and extremely heavy garments (weighing between 8 and 10 kg), made with tens of thousands of limestone or shell beads, strung with threads, whose use would have been linked to ritual celebrations of a ceremonial or liturgical nature. In addition, on the back of the piece we can make out a serpentiform motif, a symbol connected with the underworld since ancient times, which must be related to the belief in a reality beyond death. Therefore, it is possible that through these rituals in which the stelae seem to have played a primordial role, the intention may have been to breathe life into the deceased, whose souls were destined to wander between light and shadow, between life and death, until the end of time.

Isn't it fascinating to be able to approach such a remote moment of our recent prehistory through pieces as significant as the one described in this article? Well, this is what you get at the MARQ, reliving history and learning from it. That's all for today. I send you lots of encouragement and strength. See you very soon in our beloved MARQ.

Maripaz Gadea, guide at MARQ.

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PIECES:

Anthropomorphic Idols

Port Guide 0804 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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Hello to all of you!

Today in #yomequedoencasaconelmarq I am going to talk to you about anthropomorphic idols, their formal characteristics and their relationship with the social changes that took place in the transition from the Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age. These figurines from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC are on display in the final part of the tour of our temporary exhibition Idols: millenary glances.

The production of anthropomorphic idols became widespread in the mid to late 3rd millennium BC throughout the south-west of the Iberian Peninsula (western Andalusia, Extremadura and Portugal). These figures were made from a variety of materials such as stone, terracotta, bone and ivory; the latter material highlights the importance of trade between distant places and shows the complexity of the commercial networks that existed at this time. The level of detail and the symmetrical proportions of these figures reveal the great skill and high level of dexterity and technique that existed among the people of the peninsular communities of the 3rd millennium BC. The body is usually nude and the eyes, nose and hair are depicted with a high degree of detail in the form of incised zigzag lines, and the sex is marked below the waist. One of the most outstanding examples of this variant of idols, which perfectly complies with the classic stylistic canon of this typology, is the anthropomorphic bone idol from Cerro de la Cabeza, a site located in Valencina de la Concepción (Seville) belonging to the collections of the Archaeological Museum of Seville and which is currently on display in the second room of our temporary exhibition Idolos: miradas milenarias (Idols: millenary gazes).

Statistically, we find a higher percentage of male anthropomorphic figures, while the production of female figures gradually decreases in number throughout the third millennium BC, and a small number of figures in which the sex could not be determined have also been documented. Anthropomorphic idols have been found both in habitational contexts and in ritual-funerary spaces and are associated with the change in social structures that occurred in the transition from the Copper Age (Chalcolithic) to the Bronze Age, leading to the very marked social inequality common in peninsular societies in the 2nd millennium BC. Curiously, it was at this time that the production of idols disappeared, with anthropomorphic idols being the most recent from a chronological point of view.

In short, anthropomorphic idols are one of the last artistic manifestations of the peninsular societies of the Chalcolithic period. These idols, which would have been associated with tribal leaders and family lineages, ceased to be produced from the Bronze Age onwards, at which time the representation of the image of the warrior, both in figures and on stelae, was imposed (on an artistic level) due to social changes.

Carlos Pérez Soler. MARQ Guide

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PIECES:

Trephined skull

Hello!

In today's post I would like to talk to you about something that, since I started to guide the permanent exhibition of the MARQ, has deeply caught my attention: the trepanned skulls in Prehistory.

Trepanation is a technique in which a surgical instrument is used to make a hole in the skull. It has been performed since ancient times and in all parts of the world. However, it is curious that to this day we still do not know for what purpose these trepanations were carried out.

During Classical Antiquity, these surgical practices were used to cure ailments such as severe migraines (in the absence of paracetamol or ibuprofen) or different types of disorders. In the words of Hippocrates, <>.

For a long time, researchers and studies suggested that trepanations were performed for surgical purposes, and in most cases they probably were. However, recent studies indicate that there may have been something beyond this medical purpose, linking trepanations to different initiation rituals, to make way for spirits, to absorb knowledge, etc.

These theories are fuelled, among other reasons, by the discovery in 1997 of a series of trepanned skulls in one of the collective tombs, dating back to the Copper Age, excavated in Russia, near the Black Sea coast. The remains of five individuals (two men and three women) whose skulls had been trepanned were found in this tomb. A trepanation, by the way, carried out at the same point: the so-called "obelion". This point, located at the top and back of the skull (at the "crown of the head"), is extremely delicate, as a bad operation can lead to serious haemorrhage. And yet, we find that these five individuals survived the trepanation, as did those to whom the skulls in the second room of our exhibition Idols, millenary gazes.

There are different types of trepanation: by boring (rotating a sharp point on the skull) and by abrasion (scraping with granular stones). Both aimed to reach the Dura Madre, keeping the "operated" subjects alive, although we also found a very small percentage of trepanations performed post-mortem. It is very curious to note the small number of skulls, within the total number of trepanations, that show signs of regeneration, so we can maintain the previous statement, whether this practice was intended to heal ailments, or whether it was a ritual. In the skulls found in the Alicante sites of Cova de la Pastora and Cova d'en Pardo, we can observe these signs of regeneration, being much more evident in the case of the latter than in the former. On the other hand, we know of the use of certain herbs or medicinal plants for these practices, which led individuals to a state of sedation, indolence and even drunkenness, such as poppy, poppy and valerian. These three plants can be found especially in the inland sites of the province, in the Alcoyano-Dianic sub-sector, and are scarcer in the southern part of the province.

In all three cases, an infusion or fermentation of its seeds and flowers, or even a mixture of them, could serve as an analgesic to overcome pain and lead the subjects to a kind of sedation similar to that caused by anaesthesia. This state could also be obtained by means of proto-beer, very different from our alcoholic beverage but whose effects would be very similar and could slightly alleviate pain.

I have to tell you that the consumption of these substances is usually linked to the celebration of different types of rituals, especially those dedicated to death or to honouring ancestors. So this, together with the fact that the trepanations were performed at approximately the same point and that the survival of the "operated" individuals was sought, supports the current line of research that points to rituals.

If this has caught your attention, don't hesitate to visit us and participate in our guided tours when all this happens because, as you can see/read throughout our articles, comments and videos, we have a lot to tell and show in our exhibitions.

In the meantime, follow us on social media and stay at home with MARQ.

Best regards.

Henar, guide at MARQ.

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PIECES:

Costamar pitcher

Port Guide 3003 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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MARQ:

Hello everybody!

Today I want to talk to you about something that makes MARQ a museum of reference: its accessibility. A space that facilitates inclusion.

As a guide at MARQ it is a privilege to work in a place that brings everyone closer to something as important as our history, and it does so thanks to a series of professionals who dedicate their efforts to it, together with the collaboration of a series of associations that make all this work possible.

Although it is true that the museum is accessible in every sense, with the adaptation of the design of the enclosure, its entrances, the exhibition discourse of the permanent exhibition, as well as having wheelchairs at the disposal of the public who need them, etc.; today I want to refer to something more specific, to the accessibility of the temporary exhibitions.

It is worth pointing out the effort that goes into these exhibitions, because they are exhibitions that last for a certain period of time and after that, they are dismantled and a different one is designed again, which means that a great deal of work is involved. The ultimate goal of all of them is to bring them closer to all people, whatever their abilities, with different resources that make this possible. Below I will tell you what these resources are based on the temporary exhibition we currently have, "Idols, Millenary Glances".

The first accessibility resource is found after passing through the entrance door to the temporary exhibition rooms, and is a tactile map, which not only facilitates orientation for the visitor but also indicates the layout of the accessible resources in Braille.

Both in the permanent and temporary exhibitions we have Braille guides made in collaboration with the ONCE resource centre in Alicante, which can be obtained at the MARQ ticket offices, also in this same place we have other resources available to the public, such as the magnetic loop, This is very useful for visiting the exhibition, as music is a magnificent resource, but it is true that it can be difficult for people with hearing aids, so the magnetic loop is a great help, and we also have magnifying glasses for those with reduced visibility to read the signs and panels.

Something very striking about these exhibitions are the reproductions of some of the most important pieces and the models that can be found in the different rooms, installed on tables adapted to fit wheelchairs so that everyone, and especially blind people, can see the exhibition by touch.

In the case of the "Idols, Millenary Glances" exhibition, we find several resources of this type. In the first room, as soon as we enter, we find a miniature reproduction of a dolmen, next to a panel where it is shown in an image, so that we can understand visually or by touch the link that idols have with megalithism. This same room has other reproductions, such as the Lady of Gavà, in the part of the precedents, or the most significant examples of each of the types of idols and, among these, we find, in my opinion, one of the greatest successes of the exhibition, a map of the Iberian Peninsula, where the different types of idols are organised by region, so that everyone can easily understand the difference and at the same time the homogeneity of these figurines and the difference between the characteristics of the idols of the Atlantic side as opposed to the Mediterranean side.

In the second room, where we talk about the different sites where idols have been found, in order to understand the contexts in which they appear, we also find replicas of several representative pieces, such as the trepanned skull from the Cova d'en Pardo (Planes). This room also contains a model of one of the most impressive sites on the Iberian Peninsula, Los Millares, in Almeria, to show us the living quarters of this settlement. It should be noted that this model is unique, it is the first model to be made of this part of the site and it has been made for the purpose of this exhibition. But these reproductions are not alone, each and every one of them is accompanied by other accessibility resources, such as explanatory panels in Braille, QR codes, where the formal characteristics of the piece are explained by audio and QR codes with sign language reading.

It is also worth noting that the audiovisuals in the rooms are subtitled, so that the message they want to convey reaches everyone.

The exhibition panels and the educational guides published have an easy-to-read section to make the exhibition discourse and educational content more accessible to all kinds of people.

As for the guided tours, they also adapt their routes and contents according to the group's users.

If the guided tour in question is requested in sign language, it should be done in advance so that it can be conducted by professionals from the Federation of Deaf Associations of the Valencian Community. In addition, this temporary exhibition has interpreter points that facilitate these visits. These points are marked areas that are specially illuminated to allow the interpreters' hands to be fully visible to the groups of deaf people making the visit.

The museum guides have the necessary resources to carry out guided tours for blind people or people with different intellectual abilities, and this is a great opportunity to transmit our heritage, which is our work and passion, to all visitors. The didactic colleagues also do the same, adapting the workshops in form and content to the different users according to their needs. In this way, together we make MARQ a museum for everyone.

For more information, here is the link to the MARQ website:

>> http://accesibilidad.marqalicante.com

#quedateencasaconelmarq

Davinia Llopis, guide at MARQ.

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PIECES:

PLATE IDOLS

In this publication I wanted to tell you about a series of pieces that you can find in our temporary exhibition "Idols. Millenary Glances". I am talking specifically about the plate idols. Throughout this article I will be revealing different curiosities about them, from the material with which they are made, the different types that can be found, to their meaning for the social groups that inhabited our peninsula during the Final Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods.

Plaque idols, characteristic of the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, are made of clay or stone (slate or schist) and usually have decoration on at least one of their two sides, engraved in a schematic and geometric manner, based on superimposed bands filled with triangles that symbolise identity marks or, in some cases, representations of the human body.

These types of pieces are linked to the individuals of a clan or tribal group, because they appear next to them in tombs or burial chambers and were visited periodically to be consulted later when an important decision had to be taken within the group, such as a burial. Therefore, we could say that these plaques would serve to control, by way of a register, the members who occupied the clan, or, in other words, genealogical information on the ancestors of the group who had already died, perpetuating their memory.

As we have just mentioned, these objects symbolise membership of a social group, but we should also mention another representation already mentioned above, the anthropomorphic. The human body can be depicted in a wide variety of ways, either schematically or, on the contrary, symbolically representing parts of the human body such as the eyes, limbs and even sex. One of the examples we can find in our exhibition is the Anta do Espadanhal Plaque from the National Museum of Archaeology of Portugal, based in Lisbon. In this case, as can be seen in the image, the pierced eyes are sculpted in bas-relief, with facial tattoos beneath them, and large arms, whose hands rest on the lower abdomen, representing the pubis.

We can also observe examples in which the head, rectangular or triangular in shape, is separated from the plaque itself as an appendix, suggesting the evocation of an upright body, and in the upper part, two perforations whose function of the plaque itself is to be carried on the neck. This is the case of the Cavaleiros plaque, also from the same museum as in the previous example.

I hope this article has been of interest to you to learn about the first manifestations of social relations and belonging to a group that appeared on the Iberian Peninsula. Stay tuned to our social networks because... "I'M STAYING AT HOME WITH THE MARQ".

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide.

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PIECES:

VENUS OF GAVÀ

Hello everybody!

Today I am going to talk to you about one of the most exceptional pieces in the first room of the temporary exhibition. "Idols: millenary glances".. An exhibition that brings together more than 200 pieces from all over the Iberian Peninsula to show the public the different forms of human representation that took place during prehistoric times, especially during the Chalcolithic period (4th - 3rd millennium BC).

The piece I am going to comment on is at the beginning of the room. It is a reproduction of the Venus of Gavà (Barcelona), from the museum in that town, a representation of the Neolithic (pre-Chalcolithic period) which serves as a precedent and starting point for the idols of the Chalcolithic period, the main protagonists of the exhibition.

The Venus of Gavà is a female human figure made of ceramic, found fragmented and incomplete at the end of 1994 in a well in the mines of Gavà (Barcelona), which were used and exploited intensively during the Neolithic period. It is one of the oldest human representations in ceramics in the whole of the Iberian Peninsula, dating from the 5th millennium BC.

As for the formal analysis of the piece, we can recognise the eyes in the shape of the sun (typical representations of peninsular prehistory), the nose, a pendant in the shape of a comb and the crossed arms arranged over the inflated belly, probably recreating a pregnant woman. According to research, this magnificent and unique piece could be related to the cult of fertility as a mother goddess, a very common ritual practice among farmers and stockbreeders in our lands during the Neolithic period.

To conclude today's visit, I would like to emphasise the importance of this figure, as it has provided us with a great deal of information about the beliefs and ritual practices of the Neolithic settlers in the east of the peninsula and about the type of anthropomorphic representations that were made during this period.

Carlos Pérez. MARQ Guide

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IDOLS

MILLENARY GLANCES

YOU CAN ACCESS FROM HERE TO THE MICROSITE OF THE EXHIBITION >> https://marqalicante-classic-admin.qwair.com/idolos

VERO from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Idols Museum 2403 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Port guide 3103 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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Hello everybody!

Today in #quedateencasaconelmarq I am going to talk about the idols found in the province of Alicante.

As we have already mentioned in previous articles and videos, idols are anthropomorphic objects made of different materials (mainly bone and stone) dated between the 4th and 3rd millennium B.C. They are common in the southern half of the peninsular territory, with two main geographical focuses where we find an abundant number of idols; the Atlantic focus (Portugal, Extremadura and part of Andalusia) and the Mediterranean focus (Levante peninsular, specifically Alicante and Murcia).

In today's article, as I mentioned at the beginning of the article, we will talk about the idols found in Alicante. First of all, we must point out that the Levantine façade is dominated by idols made of bone (mainly phalanges and long bones of bovids and caprids) and that most of these findings have been found in funerary contexts, Most of these findings have been found in funerary contexts, mainly in collective burial caves, although a small number of idols have also been documented in domestic contexts linked to the settlements of the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, such as those found at the Niuet site (L'Alqueria d'Asnar).

In terms of typology, there is an abundance of occulted idols on bone, hopper idols, tritriangular idols and the exceptional ancoriform idols. All of them represent silhouettes of human bodies or anatomical features in a partial and very schematic manner.

Geographically, the idols from Alicante are concentrated in the mountainous interior of the territory, mainly at the headwaters of the river Serpis and its adjacent mountains, with the tritriangular idols from Cova d'En Pardo (Planes), the idols hidden on bone from Cova de la Pastora (Alcoy) and the wonderful ancoriform idol in bone found in the Cova de la Barcella (La Torre de les Maçanes), which is in room one of the exhibition, standing out. All of them have been found in collective burial caves (a common burial model in Alicante at the end of the Neolithic and beginning of the Chalcolithic), where different types of rich and varied grave goods have also been found, which have provided a great deal of information about funerary rituals and the world of beliefs during this period.

In short, the territory of Alicante is very prolific in terms of the variety of types and number of idols, being one of the most important in the Mediterranean area. Thanks to all the findings and research carried out, it is clear that this type of objects known as idols would have a direct link with the world of death and burials in our lands.

Carlos Pérez, Guide at MARQ.
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Hello dear friends!

As some of our colleagues have already mentioned, we can find a great variety of idols in terms of their formal typology: phalanx idols and idols on long bones, betilts and stone cylinders, plaques and stelae... Their forms are regional adaptations of the same concept, the human body, representing from images reduced to their simple outline to highly detailed representations, in which we can distinguish limbs, sexual attributes or even personal ornaments.

But if there is one element that unifies all these typologies into a single whole, it is the representation of the face, a large face, disproportionate to the body. The most expressive part is the eyes, which are shown permanently open, contemplating everything and normally radiated, evoking the sun (sun-eyes). These have been used to represent the eyes themselves - whether divine, human or animal - as well as astral motifs, related to the life cycle of nature. What we can say with certainty is that there is a close relationship between the representation of the first soliform motifs in the Iberian Peninsula and the arrival of the first Neolithic people, around 7,500 years ago. For them, whose life was governed by the agricultural cycle, the sun occupied a prominent place in their worldview, being considered a magical "entity" thanks to which life arose, both from the earth and from women. In fact, numerous shelters with cave paintings and dolmen or tholos burials are directly linked to solstices or equinoxes (due to their orientation). Therefore, it is very likely that the radiated eyes represented in the occulted idols allude to the solar cult that arose in the ancient Neolithic period and which continued to exist throughout this period and during the Chalcolithic or Copper Age.

On the other hand, most researchers relate the idols to ancestor worship. The link with those who were no longer there and from whom they descended was vital to legitimise ownership of land, the right to a space - these were unwritten societies, which did not know how to write. There is a saying that goes like this: "the eyes are the mirror of the soul". And, in fact, it may be that with these occult representations they were trying to capture the souls of those who were no longer with them, the souls of their ancestors, to worship and adore them wherever they were.

In addition to the eyes, we can also find other elements: a series of curved lines interpreted as eyebrows -above the eyes-, facial tattoos -under the eyes- or even masks. Looking at today's "primitives" (Australian Aborigines, Bushmen, Amazonian groups...) allows us to approach the way individuals thought or behaved in prehistoric times. All these groups used body paint or ornaments as elements that provide information without the need to speak, indicating status, belonging to a group... It is therefore quite possible that the lines that appear under the eyes represented this facial painting. But were they tattooed? In 1991, German mountaineers found a freeze-dried body in the snow and ice of the Otzal massif in the Italian Alps; known as the "Otzï, the snowman".The body was covered with tattoos consisting of dots, stripes and crosses. Thanks to this finding, we can affirm that prehistoric individuals did indeed tattoo themselves and it is very possible that the lines represented in the occultations are tattoos. Furthermore, we know that they used body paint, both ochre and cinnabar, as numerous remains have been found in a large number of archaeological sites.

In short, the detail of some idols, as well as the presence of unique features, suggests that they may represent or evoke individuals rather than divinities, following recognisable codes in specific territorial areas, becoming symbolic representations of ancestors.

That's all for today, see you soon friends!

Mª Paz Gadea. MARQ Guide

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Hello everybody!

Today in #QuédateencasaconelMARQ, I have the great privilege of being able to share with you my experience of the new temporary exhibition currently on display at MARQ: Idols. Millennial Glances

Inaugurated on January 29th, this temporary exhibition made up of unique prehistoric pieces from Spain and Portugal, arrived at MARQ to generate all kinds of sensations.

Personally, I have to say that it is special for me because it is the first one I have had the honour of meeting since I have been working as a customer service staff at MARQ.

I fondly remember the whole process that I experienced from the job I have: the eagerness of the visitors to know the date of the inauguration, the previous preparations that the archaeologists and technicians of the MARQ carried out with such care and delicacy, the eagerly awaited inauguration with its corresponding repercussion in the press, the advertising posters that you find around the city and on public transport?

I will never forget the first time I entered the temporary rooms of the museum.

I was amazed at the ingenuity and creativity brought together to create an atmosphere that takes you back in time. The structure of the exhibition and the layout of the pieces is simply brilliant.

Of course Idols. Millennial GlancesIt is an exhibition that has come to surprise us so, from our social networks (and our homes), we will take care of bringing a piece of this magnificent exhibition to your homes.

Stay tuned for more content coming soon on #QuédateencasaconelMARQ ;)

Good luck!

Nerea Cuba, aMARQ's public service

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Hello everybody!

Today I am going to tell you a little about the new exhibition of ÍDOLOS, MIRADAS MILENARIAS and what it transmits to me.

In my opinion, this exhibition seems to me to be very complete in every detail, because its curators and the MARQ technicians have not overlooked anything. I have to mention the magnificent layout of the rooms, the decoration, the music that accompanies it...

One of the things I would highlight, which really caught my attention when I first saw the exhibition, were the two sculptures at the beginning of the itinerary. They are of a woman and her daughter, and as soon as you see them, you can imagine and transport yourself back to that time because they are two very real figures. The magnificent tattoos on their faces are very striking, as is the wonderful background that accompanies the mother and daughter, and I must also say that the expression on their faces makes them look real.

In conclusion, this exhibition is worth a visit and it is worth knowing a little more about it, as it helps us to get to know the way of life of our ancestors in the Iberian Peninsula and thus be able to travel back in time and learn a little more about our history.

Lidia Alcázar, MARQ customer service.

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PIECES:

PETRACHOS ORANTES

Hello everybody!

Today in #quedateencasaconelmarq I am going to tell you about my favourite piece in the permanent exhibition, not without first saying that it is very difficult for me to choose one in particular, because each room has incredible pieces of incalculable archaeological value.

Because of its spectacular nature and artistic value, I am going to choose the recreation of the cave painting of the Orantes del Pla de Petracos, located at the end of the Prehistory room.

This painting is one of the most characteristic of Macro-schematic Art, a type of rock art belonging to the Ancient Neolithic period that can only be found in the mountainous inland areas of the Province of Alicante and the south of the Province of Valencia and is linked to the first farmers of our lands.

The scene of the Orantes is located a few kilometres from the Alicante town of Castell de Castells (Marina Alta), in what is known as the Sanctuary of Pla de Petracos (included in the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO since 1998). The painting is located in the middle of a group of shelters in which we can also find different motifs characteristic of the purest Macroesquematic style. The representation that concerns us today is made up of two human figures in a praying attitude (of supplication or supplication) to ask for good harvests, these would have been represented by the Neolithic artists through serpentiform motifs, also very common in this type of prehistoric art. The representation has a symbolic and religious character as it is a ritual scene linked to the fertility of the earth, the cycles of the seasons, the harvests and the religious world of the first farmers located in our land around the 6th millennium BC.

In short, the Pla de Petracos Sanctuary is one of the most important sites with cave paintings in the whole of the Valencian Community. Visiting it is a magnificent opportunity to discover and enjoy nature and prehistoric art in a privileged landscape and environmental setting.

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide.

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MAYAS

The Enigma of the Lost Cities

Port guia 0106 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Hello dear friends!

I remember with great affection and fascination a temporary exhibition we had at MARQ two years ago: "Mayas. The enigma of the lost cities".The exhibition consists of more than two hundred pieces, mostly from the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Guatemala and from two institutions in that country that are fighting against despoilment to preserve the memory of this millenary culture that continues to impress everyone: the Ruta Maya Foundation and the Neria Herrera Collection of the Juan Antonio Valdés Museum.

I am grateful to have had the good fortune to be able to participate in it, transporting and immersing visitors in the jungle, the cradle of this incredible culture, and touring its myths, legends and history through an exceptional collection of pieces.

In addition, in each of the halls we could walk among temples and monumental palaces, to finally travel to XibalbaThe "jaguar man", a sculpture of a sacred feline, in human form, in a stalking posture, which allowed us to approach the supernatural Mayan world.

Visiting this Exhibition at MARQ really became a totally sensory experience as, in addition to the impressive exhibition set-up and the monumentality of many of the pieces, visitors made their way through the jungle and temples listening to the roar of the jaguar and howler monkeys marking their territory, smelling the wild vegetation and cacao (the money that grew on the trees...).

In short, to visit the MARQ is to open a door to the past, to find the history of the future...

It is a time to remember the wisdom of our ancestors and, for this reason, I would like to share a reflection with you:

"Let everyone stand up, let no one be left behind,

not one or two of us, but all of us".

Popol Vuh (Sacred Book of the Maya)

You can remember this marvellous exhibition on the website >> https://marqalicante-classic-admin.qwair.com/mayas

Maripaz Gadea, Guide at the MARQ

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IRAN

CRADLE OF CIVILISATIONS

Hello!

The temporary exhibitions housed in the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante are an opportunity to bring visitors a little piece of our history and even help us to get to know distant cultures without having to move from Alicante. Moreover, for us as guides, it is an unbeatable opportunity to delve deeper and get closer to different cultures and civilisations and thus get to know the people who lived in other times and made and used the pieces that you can see on display in our rooms and spread the word to all our visitors.

Although it is true that all the MARQ exhibitions are spectacular in terms of their exhibition set-up and content, if I had to choose just one, I would undoubtedly choose "...".Iran, Cradle of Civilisations".It is very special for me, because it was the first temporary exhibition that I guided in this museum, and I have a special affection for it. It also meant that I had to face new challenges, such as being able to talk about a country as vast and rich in history as Iran, covering a journey from prehistory to the 18th century in just one hour, and trying to ensure that visitors were not completely enraptured.

But as well as helping me to overcome these challenges, the exhibition took us on a journey through time to understand how such important inventions for mankind as writing came about, as the first room housed a bulla. The bullae are clay balls with tokens inside that served as a kind of contract, where to record a commercial transaction, and this system was the germ of writing. Once this was known, our journey continued with the first empires that settled in Iran or originated in the territory of this current country, such as the Achaemenid Persian empire, an empire that between myth and truth left a record of pieces, monuments and cities that show us its power and wealth; such as the golden rhyton of Hamadan. A vessel in the shape of a winged lion for liturgical or ceremonial use, which we found in the apse of the second room. It even took us back to the birth of Islam and how it came to spread its faith to Persian lands, in the third room, where we found a 16th century Qur'an. And our journey ended in the 18th century when the capital of Iran changed from Isfahan to Tehran, the current capital of Iran. It also showed the historical relations between the Austrian and Safavi Dynasties, which have lasted until today between Spain and Iran.

So that you can be captivated, as I was, by this exhibition, I leave you the link to the video of Iran, Cradle of Civilisations: https://vimeo.com/323666071

You can remember this marvellous exhibition on the website >> https://marqalicante-classic-admin.qwair.com/iran

Davinia Llopis, guide at MARQ.

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DEPOSITS: YWAM

VIDEOS

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THE MARQ WITH WORLD DOWN SYNDROME DAY

21 March is World Day for People with Down's Syndrome. MARQ joins this initiative reaffirming the collaboration that we have maintained for seven years with the Alicante Down Syndrome Association.

From here we encourage you to support this magnificent campaign, with the optimism and strength that people with Down syndrome transmit to us, such as José Manuel and Jesús from IES Mediterrània in Benidorm, who have joined our hastag #quedateencasaconelmarq.

You can see the full content here:

https://marqalicante-classic-admin.qwair.com/Noticias/es/El-MARQ-con-el-Dia-Mundial-del-Sindrome-de-Down-N1199.html

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NEWS

ROMAN CULTURE ROOM

Videos on Rome

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The Centurion

Port yac 0106 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Capital punishment

Port yac 2905 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Necrophores

Port yac 2805 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Roman coins

Port guia 2705 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Roman Road

Port yac 2605 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

The dice

Port guide 2005 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Roman Funerary Iscriptions

Port guia 1505 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Who was Marcus Popilius?

Marco Popilio from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo

Burials in Roman times

E Roman settlements from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo

More content on this topic of the guides >> ENLARGE

Glass in Roman times

V Roman idrio from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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Hello friends!!!!

Today I am going to talk to you about the room I am most passionate about in the museum. To be honest, I have to confess that I really enjoy each one of them, both for the wealth of pieces they contain and for the way they are shown to the public. But if I had to choose one, I would undoubtedly go for the Roman Culture Hall.

As a guide, I really enjoy showing this room to visitors, as it is very easy to understand how the daily life of the inhabitants of a Roman city unfolded.

In the room, we have two large screens on both sides that allow us to "travel back in time" to see what the Roman city of Lucentum was like and what the work that was carried out in the different types of villa consisted of. Visitors can observe the pieces by walking through the streets of the city, entering the interior of the "baths of the wall" of Lucentum, seeing how olive trees are harvested in an agricultural villa or how fish are raised in the villa that was located in the "Illeta dels Banyets", villas in which they produced some of the star products of antiquity, such as olive oil, salted fish or the famous and coveted "garum", a fermented and salted fish sauce that was said to have curative and aphrodisiac properties.

In addition, this room houses a piece that is unique in the world: the "Lucentum bronze hand".. Found in the archaeological site of Tossal de Manises in La Albufereta de Alicante, Lucentum, during the excavation campaign carried out in 2005, directed by our current director of the MARQ, Mr. Manuel Olcina Domenech. It is a fragment of a bronze sculpture, made using the lost wax technique, which must have measured between 2.20-2.30 m. in height, and which was located in the forum of the city. The hand is holding the hilt of a very special sword, a "parazoniumThe symbol of military and political power, which is generally characterised by the representation of a double eagle's head. The specimen we have in the museum makes this detail a "unicumin a completely unusual and extraordinary piece.

So friends, just tell you one thing... With a museum like ours, how can you not keep this impressive continent of wisdom, even listed as one of the "MUST SEE" by National Geographic?

That's all for today but see you soon. And of course... ¡¡¡¡"I STAY AT HOME WITH THE MARQ"!!!!

Maripaz Gadea, guide.

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Women and religion in Roman culture

Hello everybody!

When we walk through the permanent exhibition of the MARQ, there are many pieces that make us reflect on our past and therefore on our present and future. They also help us to imagine how our ancestors lived, thanks to the objects they used in their time. This happens to us when we visit the Roman culture room and come across some female figurines attributed to the goddess Venus, which, when we see them, make us think about the role of women in the Roman religion. A priori, we might think that her role would be very active in religion, since the Roman pantheon has numerous goddesses, but as you will see if you read on, there is little truth in this thought.

In order to understand the position of women in the Roman religious world, it must be emphasised that Roman religion had a public character and was therefore a religion directed, administered and organised by the state, so it was strongly linked to political and civic life. Political life was something exclusive to men and therefore women were excluded from this power. Because of this, the head of the Roman religion has always been a man. In monarchic times it was the rex; in republican times the Senate became the highest religious authority; and with the establishment of the one-man system of government in the hands of Augustus, religious power was held by the emperor, pontifex maximus of the Roman public religion and at the same time he became a divinity.

It was no different in the private or domestic sphere, since both the members of the family and the domestic cult were under the highest power in the family, the paterfamilias, who was the priest of the private cult, and the one in charge of carrying out the rites and enforcing them.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that women had a reserved space to express their religious sentiments and in some cases even held the priesthood.

One of the priesthoods that women could perform was the priesthood of the goddess Vesta. The cult of Vesta was held by six women from noble families who consecrated their virginity; in fact, the loss of virginity was a serious crime, the crime of incestum, of contamination, and the guilty were condemned to be buried alive. These women dedicated their lives to the goddess from the age of 6-10 until they were 36-40 years old, during their fertile years. These women could exercise the priesthood because they were legally considered as men, since on entering the priesthood, the young vestal left the parental authority of her father and no longer needed a guardian to carry out the acts derived from civil activity, and thus ceased to be considered a minor, like the rest of the women.

In addition to the vestals, we find the presence of women in the priesthood, but in this case as a complement to their husbands, since the wives of the flamines maiores and of the rex sacrum had the task of helping them in priestly acts, although they did not enjoy the juridical privileges that the vestals had, but were under the power of their husbands. These women represented the model of the Roman matron, to whom one could apply the adjectives of caste, púdica, lanifica, univira and unicuba.

Apart from these priesthoods, we find women in a prominent place in the cult of the emperor, in which both male and female priestly functions were established. In addition, the wives and mothers of the emperors became imperial divars and after their death they became divinities symbolising motherhood, being assimilated to the fertile mother-goddesses who brought prosperity to the empire and protected its inhabitants.

Within the Roman religion we find foreign gods due to Roman contacts with the Greek and Eastern world, so other female priesthoods linked to Eastern divinities arose in Rome: Bacchus-Dionysus, Magna Mater-Cybele, Isis and the Hellenised cult of the goddess Ceres, Demeter. The cases of Cybele, Isis and Demeter represented particular forms of maternity that were attractive to Roman women as they had elements in common with traditional matronly cults, although one cult that departed from this perception of the chaste woman was the mystical cult of Bacchus, at first an exclusive cult for women, although over time men, especially young men, were allowed.

In addition to the female priesthood, we must highlight their participation in cults and rituals, such as the matronly liturgies and cults that would be practised by future matrons such as the Fortuna Virginalis, in which the girl who entered adolescence, normally when she had her first menstruation, gave her childish clothes to the goddess Fortuna and put on the stole of the matron. It was a rite of passage that placed the young Roman girl in the position of marriageable, being evident to the eyes of the people due to the change of dress.

But women not only participated in cults related to fertility, but also, albeit at certain moments, women participated in cults to the more political and warrior invocations of the goddess Juno, or even during the Republican period they worshipped Hercules. Therefore, we see that women, although they participated in cults and rituals, had a very limited role in political power and therefore in religious power.

Remember that if you want more information about the past, stay tuned to our social networks, and we'll see you soon at MARQ.

Davinia Llopis, MARQ guide.

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THE CULT OF HAIRSTYLE IN ANCIENT ROME

Hello everybody!

Today I want to talk to you about everyday life in Roman times, specifically about an essential aspect for the daily life of the upper classes, as we are going to talk about fashion, about the hairstyles used by women and men from Republican times until the arrival of Christianity; and the fact is that in Rome there really was a great cult of hairstyles.

Starting from the premise that Roman women have always worn their hair long, its shape varied according to the period. Let's start by talking about the Republican era, when the trend for women was for simple hairstyles, with chignons with a parting in the middle becoming the norm. Already in this same period, the toupee appeared and, from then on, it was very present and evolved progressively.

In the Imperial period, and especially with the change of era, the sobriety of the previous period began to be left behind and more sophisticated hairstyles became common, in which braiding was incorporated and wigs, volumes and curls began to be used. To achieve the curls, the calamistrum, a hot iron that functioned as a kind of curling iron, was used. The oldest known hairstyle from the early years of the Empire was the "Octavia hairstyle", which consisted of a topknot on the forehead and a braid gathered in a bun at the nape of the neck.

During the Flavian dynasty a new trend emerged, high, multi-layered hairstyles; the hair was gathered in a semicircle (orbis) and left to fall in curls (anuli), holding each one in place with a thick needle (acus). In fact, in the chronological-cultural room of the MARQ dedicated to Rome we can see samples of these needles and pins to hold the hairstyles in place. Each hairstyle had a name, such as the tutulus, which was the hairstyle that gathered the hair at the top of the head forming a sort of cone and over which a veil was placed. These hairstyles were not worn on a daily basis, due to their complexity, but were reserved for large festivities, and often required the help of expert women, and sometimes hairpieces were even used to increase the volume of the hair, and hairnets were also used to hold the hairstyle in place.

During the Empire, the use of wigs, hairpieces, dyes and even coloured ointments for hair dyeing were very common. Using needles and purple ribbons, to which flowers were often added for decoration, as well as gold and rose powders and perfumes.

As a curiosity, an exclusively feminine fashion was to appear to have blonde hair; Roman women usually had black hair, and the blonde effect was achieved by using a dye (sapo) that dyed the hair that colour, complementing the effect with the use of hairpieces made of Nordic hair.

But these elaborate hairstyles saw their decline with the arrival of Christianity, which also influenced the way of doing hair by promoting austerity and feminine discretion, returning to simplicity, leaving behind headdresses, wigs and curls and bringing back into fashion simple, low buns with a middle parting, as during the Republic.

In the case of men, haircuts and the way they wore their beards also changed over time.

Until the 3rd century BC, men did not shave or cut their hair, but from this century onwards, the custom of shaving became widespread, a fashion that lasted until the Second Punic War, when the custom of removing the beard after the age of forty became widespread as a sign of old age; when the first grey hair began to show, it was removed with tweezers and eventually they opted to shave their faces permanently. During this period, adolescents wore their hair short and straight, i.e. left to their own devices, cut short per pectinem or strictim.

In Hadrian's time, the beard became fashionable again, which lasted until the first decades of the 4th century when Constantine came to power, when the custom of shaving returned, although there were exceptions. Men who were in mourning grew their beards and their hair. The same was done by those who had a criminal case pending to make the judge feel sympathy by appearing badly dressed, dirty and dishevelled. Philosophers also wore a thick beard, a singularity that goes back to the Greek custom of the Hellenistic age, when everyone began to shave and only the philosophers maintained the ancient use of the long beard. During the time of Constantine there was another variety of male hairstyle, which was characteristic of young Romans who cared about maintaining a good appearance, this hairstyle consisted of curling the hair with the calamistrum.

Seeing this desire to follow fashions, and to take care of their hair, also on the part of men, we can understand that a serious problem for them was baldness, and it caused them great concern. Julius Caesar was one of those who felt this concern, as was Caligula, who tried to cover his baldness with wigs, diadems and even a crown of laurels, another of the methods to conceal alopecia was to paint the head, imputing each hair.

So there is no doubt that Ovid was right when he said: "even I do not feel able to explain so many different fashions, a number that increases with each passing day", because the fashion of hairstyle was constantly changing and coinciding with the emperors who were in power at the time, and the family of the emperor was also very influential.

#quedateencasaconelmarq

Davinia Llopis, MARQ guide.

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FUNERARY RITUALS IN ROME

Hello everybody!

In this new post of our space #quedateencasaconelMARQ, I would like to talk to you about the funerary rituals of Roman times.

Funerary customs and rites in Rome had a long and varied evolution throughout history. Originally, there was no unification of burial systems or traditions to follow, and it was with the passage of time and as a result of cultural exchanges with other civilisations that they developed their own funeral rituals that were recognised worldwide.

But before we move on with this topic, we must ask the question, what does death mean for society in this age? Perhaps the answer can be summed up in one word: everything. Death was a very present aspect and even more so when life expectancy was very short. For this reason, from the beginning of the Republic, people began to believe in the permanence of the soul in the body of the deceased and not in its separation, as was the case in previous cultures.

Thus, an underground place covered with earth was necessary for soul and body to remain united. The fear that his soul was destined to return to the earthly world to torment his loved ones for not having followed the stipulated funeral ceremonies of mourning and burial led any Roman, with financial means, to leave in writing before his death the funeral rites that his relatives and heirs were to provide for him, as well as the location of the tomb.

The preparation of the funerals of the upper social classes took place during the day and the families competed with each other for the grandeur of the event. As for the transfer of the corpse to the tomb, it was always at night because death was impure and associated with pollution, so it had to be done outside the cities.

In the event of not having enough money to buy a burial plot or a niche for cremation, there was the possibility of joining what was called collegia funeraticia, an association of a guild or religious nature, which, by paying an annual fee, undertook to ensure that its members had a dignified funeral. This was the only way for the poorer classes to have a burial place, except at times when certain emperors took it upon themselves to provide them with a proper funeral.

The situation was very different for the poorest, who were collected from the streets at dusk, dumped in mass graves on the outskirts of the cities to rot and then cremated in the same pits.

The preparation of the corpse, for the wealthy classes, required a series of complex processes that I will discuss below. When a person died, the next of kin would collect their last breath in a glass to hold their spirit before leaving the earthly world; afterwards, they would be kissed, their eyes would be closed and their rings would be removed to avoid any kind of robbery in the grave. To confirm that the person had passed away, the name was called out loud three times in order to retain the soul until burial and, of course, to verify the actual death. The next step was taken by the slaves, who washed, perfumed and dressed the body of the deceased in their best clothes. In some cases, the deceased could also be accompanied by a mask, which would be worn for the duration of the burial. On the other hand, their relatives were dressed in their worst attire, as was the case with the women, who tore and stained their clothes during the ceremonial rite as a demonstration of grief and sorrow.

The next event, if it could be afforded, was the funeral pomp or funeral procession. For this, musicians were hired to sing funeral tunes, followed by torchbearers and, after them, mourners accompanying the coffin. Noble families could even incorporate the images of their ancestors who had held public office, with masks of their relatives carried by men. After them came the coffin and the mourning relatives dressed in mourning clothes.

As for the duration of funerals, as is evident, it also depended on the social class the person occupied. In the case of the poor, they were buried on the same day or at most the following day, so the corpse was not exposed; the middle and upper classes were buried for three to six days, and finally, the emperors, who were exposed for a whole week.

Once the deceased had been veiled, according to the stipulated time, all that remained was the place of burial: the necropolis. These funerary spaces, located outside the city walls but close to the roads leading in and out of the city, became a place of ostentation through the decoration of funerary monuments. However, above all else, the primary objective was to guarantee the memory and social prestige of the deceased.

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide

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PERSONAL GROOMING IN ANCIENT ROME

Hello everybody!

Today I want to talk to you about skin care and make-up products used in Roman times. In the Roman culture room of the permanent exhibition at MARQ, there is a display case dedicated to objects used for personal grooming. Perhaps despite the fact that Roman culture is one of the best known, even today it is still an object of astonishment for its architecture, for its vast empire and we are always discovering new details about this fascinating culture, as there are subjects, such as the one we are going to deal with today, that are still unknown to many.

Personal grooming and appearance was very important for both women and men at this time, and even more importance was given to the complexion. Skin care was a real obsession for upper-class Romans, and around it developed a veritable art of make-up no less sophisticated and luxurious than that of our own time.

Most women painted themselves when they left the house, especially their eyes, eyebrows and eyelids, according to specific and careful beauty standards. These canons advised women to have luminous, rosy and, above all, white skin. Achieving white skin became a real obsession, it was already a distinguishing feature. To achieve this effect of whiteness, various substances were used, many of them not very recommendable, which were applied to the face in the same way as today's make-up. For this purpose and to soften the skin, creams were used in which ingredients such as lanolin from sheep's wool without degreasing, starch and tin oxide were used. Lanolin served as the base for the mixture; starch softened the skin, a function for which it is still used today in cosmetic products; tin was the skin-whitening element, and came into use during the Empire as a substitute for lead acetate, which had very harmful effects. A make-up base made from vinegar, honey and olive oil was also used, as well as dried melon roots applied as a poultice and crocodile or starling droppings. Other ingredients used as bleaching agents were beeswax, olive oil, rose water, almond oil, saffron, cucumber, dill, mushrooms, poppies, lily root and egg. For the same purpose, women were said to eat cumin in large quantities. Mica powder was used to make the skin more radiant.

Once this skin colour had been achieved, the next step was to colour the cheekbones with bright red tones, as a symbol of good health. To do this, red earth, henna or cinnabar were applied, although there were cheaper alternatives, such as blackberry juice or wine lees. On the other hand, for lip carmine, very bright red tones were also used, achieved with ochre from lichen or molluscs, rotten fruit and even minium. Furthermore, according to Propertius, the fashion was widespread for women to mark the veins on their temples in blue.

According to the Roman ideal of beauty, a woman should have large eyes and long eyelashes. To achieve this effect, a small rounded instrument made of ivory, glass, bone or wood, previously dipped in oil or water, was used to apply the eye liner, which was obtained with galena, soot or antimony powder. The eye shadow had to be eye-catching and the preferred colours were black or blue, and to obtain these, ash and zurite were essential. Also, and due to Egyptian influence, there were green shadows made with malachite powder. Eyebrows were outlined without lengthening them and were retouched with tweezers. There was a preference for eyebrows drawn together over the nose, an effect achieved by applying a mixture of crushed ant eggs and dried flies, a mixture which was also used as mascara for the eyelashes.

All the cosmetics used could be bought in the markets, and could be found in different formats; those that were liquid were placed in small terracotta containers, in green and bluish glass vessels or in small containers made of different materials; the neck of the container was closed in such a way that the make-up could be poured drop by drop. In fact, some glass containers can be found in the museum. Thick cosmetics were sold in small wooden chests of Egyptian carving, accompanied by shells for mixing, spatulas, pencils, brushes or swabs for applying the make-up.

To apply make-up, it was essential to have a mirror, such as the bronze mirror in the display case in the Roman Culture room, found at Lucentum and dating from the 1st and 2nd centuries. These mirrors could have a rounded shape, in accordance with the Etruscan tradition, or a square shape, a very widespread and common model throughout the Empire. Traditionally, mirrors were made of metal (either bronze, copper, silver or gold) and had finely worked handles, either in metal, bone or ivory.

But to have a perfect complexion, not only make-up is not enough, it must also be cared for, and the Romans used masks at night to keep their skin free of wrinkles, freckles and blemishes. There were beauty masks against blemishes, such as one made with fennel, perfumed myrrh, rose petals, incense, rock salt and barley juice. To counteract wrinkles, a mask made with rice and broad bean flour was very common; donkey's milk was also used, with which some women used to wash themselves up to seven times a day, according to Pliny the Elder.

The same author reports another surprising remedy for wrinkles: the astragalus (foot bone) of a white calf, boiled for forty days and forty nights until it turned to jelly and then applied with a cloth. The application of snail ashes was recommended to treat freckles. For smoothing the skin, a mask made from wild turnip and flour from yero, barley, wheat and lupin was very common. There were also facial masks to treat acne, eye ulcers and lip wounds.

From what we have seen, the Romans devoted a lot of time and resources to beautifying themselves and this became a real obsession, to the point of using even toxic, repugnant and exotic products.

#quedateencasaconelmarq

Davinia Llopis, MARQ guide.

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IN THE HOT SPRINGS

Hello everybody!

In today's post on #quedateencasaconelMARQ, I would like to tell you about one of the places most frequented by the Romans: the thermal baths.

Before getting into the subject, we must make a distinction between public and private baths. Thermal baths refer to the first type and are, therefore, the one we are going to analyse in this publication, while, for the second case, they are called balmes or balneum and are the baths that were found in the ancient Roman villas.

The name itself comes from the Greek thermos (hot). And it is here, in Greece, where it originated, specifically from the traditional gymnasium, consisting of a palestra, a bath and an exedra (a circular building with seats), where the Greek philosophers discussed with their disciples. After the physical exercises, they went on to bathe in hot water and then to the exedra where they received philosophical education. Following this example, and taking into account that, in Rome, the most important leisure activities were sport and the collective practice of bathing, the combination of both gave rise to the so-called thermal baths.
Initially, they were created in places where it was possible to use hot water from natural springs until, in imperial times, they began to be extended to cities, thanks to technical advances that made it possible to heat the water.

Subsequently, water will come through constructions such as aqueducts or cisterns.

Although the inhabitants of the cities were already beginning to use small spas located around their homes, it was not until the end of the 1st century BC that we see the first large thermal baths under the emperor Agrippa. This was the starting point, and with the succession of emperors we saw much more grandiose constructions with the aim of surpassing their predecessors.

The thermal baths or public baths became meeting places for all social classes and sexes. They were one of the main places for community life or even to conclude business of any kind, including political matters. However, although men and women shared certain spaces at certain times, the bathing hours were different for men and women: women tended to go in the morning, while men went in the evening. Later, with the arrival of Christianity, it was decided that women were not allowed to bathe in the baths.

Another of the nuances of the occupation of these rooms was the enjoyment of some services inside them, such as massages or the use of ointments and perfumes, only suitable for the most privileged, because they were expensive products and, therefore, not within the reach of any pocket; or because it was necessary to have slaves for their enjoyment.

As for the construction of the site, we know that a thermal complex must have had at least three basic rooms: frigidarium (cold water room), tepidarium (warm room) and caldarium (hot water room), but there were others, such as those built in Rome itself, in which we can find changing rooms, sauna, exercise yard, library and even a swimming pool.

As for the main rooms, the person entering the baths had to start their journey through the tepidarium until they reached the caldarium and repeat the process in reverse to finish their bath. In the case of the larger baths, the tepidarium and the frigidarium were duplicated so that the route went in a single direction without having to go backwards.

The interior of the hot-water rooms and pools used a system known as hypocaustum, which consisted of distributing the heat under the floors of these rooms through tunnels and hot-water pipes, through a series of furnaces located in the basements.

In short, the baths were essential elements in Roman life in terms of physical education, hygiene and health. But we can also say that they were an enrichment of art, reflected in the frescoed walls and mosaic-decorated floors. Unfortunately, after the Roman period, the baths lost their splendour, perhaps because of the excessive cost of maintaining them or because of the changes in customs under Christianity.

In any case, in spite of its gradual abandonment, we can still enjoy its essence through its archaeological remains, in many places of our Spanish geography, but especially in our sites of Illeta dels Banyets in Campello and Lucentum in Alicante.

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide

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WOMEN IN ROME

Hello everybody!

Today I want to talk to you about the role of women in the private sphere, that is, within the family in Roman society. It should be noted that this role was changing from the time of the kings until the Empire, evolving to acquire new customs that would never have been allowed in ancient times. In this paper we will focus on the life of this from the end of the Republic, since in the Roman culture room of the MARQ we find remains from this time, after the Second Punic War, when the Romans extended their territory to the Iberian Peninsula.

Before continuing, we should clarify that although we are referring to women in a generic way from the beginning, we will unfortunately speak of the rights of privileged and upper class women, since most of the information that has come down to us through contemporary sources speaks of women of this social class.

Roman society was characterised by enormous class inequality, and also inequality between men and women, especially if we compare it with other societies such as the Egyptians. Although it is true that Roman society, in this respect, was much more advanced than other cultures such as the Greeks, since the role of Greek women was to remain confined to their homes.

Roman law dictated that a woman was inferior to a man and always remained a minor or impuber, i.e. legally equal to children. Therefore, she depended on the authority of a paterfamilias, who would first be her father and, if she married, her husband. Thus, under the direction of the paterfamilias, the woman's fundamental role within the family was the formal custody of the keys to the house and the control of the daily life of the children and slaves, although it is true that wealthy women had no obligations as housewives.

However, towards the beginning of our era, things began to change and women undertook a process of emancipation thanks to their achievements, although it should also be noted that this was partly due to the influence of Egyptian society, among other factors. Thus women overcame the traditional role that had been imposed on them and began to achieve a certain freedom with respect to family ties, as they achieved independence both from their father and patria potestas and from the husband's absolute authority over them (in manu), which gradually disappeared. Although she was never able to acquire certain rights such as political rights, which were exclusive to men, she never had the right to vote. At this time we can already see that women had freedom of thought and a certain freedom of action and even economic freedom, in fact we find examples of women who managed to amass great fortunes, as was the case of Livia and Mesalia. In spite of these changes, which were achieved over time, the role of women belonging to the aristocracy continued to be, for the most part, that of supervising the household and the people in it, because work in ancient Rome was not seen as a right or a proof of liberation. However, the chronicles do tell us about women of more privileged social status who were poets such as Melinno, who wrote a poem about the greatness of Rome (Imperial Age); writers of elegies such as Sulspicia (Augustan Age); even lawyers such as Afrania or Carfania, something surprising due to the express prohibition of exercising this kind of trade or profession. There were also women of humble status who were saleswomen, copyists, tailors, teachers or doctors, workers in places of entertainment or theatres, merchants, among many other professions.

We also see this change in the rights of women in social activities within the home, since although women could participate in the banquets, we see great differences between the Republican period and the period following Augustus. In the beginning, women at these banquets had to stay out of the beds or lectus (triclinium) and had to be retired, sitting on chairs together with the children, but from the 1st century BC onwards. Women began to be seen as a more active part of these receptions, as they were allowed to recline in these lectus like the men who had been invited to the meal, a fact that we see represented in the Roman culture room of the MARQ, where we find an image that recreates a scene of a banquet held in the room of the triclinium where we can also see women in the lectus.

After this brief review of the role of women within the household, we can see an evolution from being considered in legal terms as an impuber or a minor, even though she had reached the age of majority, to being able to achieve certain rights such as the right to dispose of her own patrimony as a consequence of the pater familias ceasing to have absolute rights over her.

Remember that if you want more information on Roman culture, #quedatencasaconelmarq.

Davinia Llopis, MARQ guide.

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THE ART OF MOSAICS

Hello everybody!

In today's #quedateencasaconelMARQ, I would like to talk about mosaics in Roman times.
The word mosaic comes etymologically from the Greek "musa". In Greek mythology, the muses are, according to the most ancient writers, the divinities who inspire the arts. Therefore, a work as precise and magnificent as the creation of a mosaic must have been inspired by them.

Mosaics did not originate with the Romans, as they have been found in other places such as Crete or Mesopotamia, but it was with Roman culture that they became important elements in all buildings, both public and private. Such was their importance and artistic level, that decrees were issued to fix the price that artists could give to their works, following a scale of qualification of all these. The price of the mosaic depended on the complexity of the design, its polychromy and the materials used (imported or local). Therefore, the possibility of having a mosaic at home was not within everyone's reach.

Generally speaking, the mosaic was a work composed of small-sized terracotta stones or glass of various colours, strategically placed to form different patterns and designs. Its technique comes from a refinement of the primitive paving that was made with pebbles and was called with the Greek term lithostrotos ("prepared with stones"), in which the area to be paved was excavated to a depth of two metres and compacted; the pebbles or gravels were spread over it in three layers, the deepest being the larger ones until reaching the top layer whose mixture would be brick dust and fine sand to achieve a greater fixation.

This practice ceased to be used from the 2nd century BC onwards, when pebbles, gravel or boulders gave way to tesserae, facilitating the application of materials more quickly and easily, as well as having a much wider range of colours available. Tesserae are small cube-shaped stones made from calcareous rocks or glass and ceramic material. They were carefully carved in different sizes and depending on this, the chosen themes or the place where they were to be placed, the mosaics adopted different names.

In both mosaic pavements and murals, before applying the tesserae, marks were made on the space to be decorated to indicate the areas that should have the tesserae of the same colour. In order to place them, a previous design had to be made in natural size and painted with the real colours that were going to be used. Once this was done, the tesserae were inserted and the spaces between them were filled with mortar and polished with sand.

Following these guidelines, the most common mosaics are of three types. Firstly, tesselatum based on marble or limestone cubes composing black and white or polychrome figures, secondly, sectile used to represent geometric compositions and made with coloured pieces of marble and, lastly, opus signinum which alternates tesserae embedded in mortar with ceramic pieces forming geometric figures or animals. In some cases, proper names could appear on the mosaics that referred to the craftsman's pride in a job well done and to the recognition of the whole group that had taken part in the craft, although not all received the same recognition.

Initially, mosaics were mainly used to decorate walls and ceilings, but with the passing of time and the improvement of techniques, they were also used to cover the surface of the floor, thus creating spectacular pavements that gave villas and palaces an additional majesty, showing the social and economic position of their tenants. With the arrival of the Imperial period, mosaic became popular and began to be used in temples, theatres, public baths and even in shops.

The themes depicted on the mosaics were very diverse, and varied according to the destination of their location and the context in which they were made. For public buildings, historical events and circus or amphitheatre games were the most common. In the case of baths, any marine image related to the god Neptune, animals or everyday scenes around ports or fishing villages. And in domestic mosaics, everyday scenes were chosen (representations of hunting and agricultural work), elements relating to the prosperity and protection of the home. Finally, at the decorative level, two themes were used, which, although they were less common, were equally striking: the obsession with time, represented by the zodiacal signs or the seasons, and their concern for geography with maps of different parts of the Roman Empire.

With the passing of time, mosaic art developed and each period contributed a different style and materials, although always maintaining the original essence. The cultures that continued this Roman heritage were the Byzantines and the Islamic culture, great lovers of mosaics as a decorative element.

Lorena Gomis, MARQ guide.

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1TP5Did you know that... The world of footwear in Roman times is extensive, and just as I have already talked about the types of footwear that were used for each use in a previous post; today I will continue with the subject of footwear as some of the information is very interesting to know.

The parts of the footwear were as follows:

> Vincul: they were the equivalent of our modern-day shoelaces.
> Corriagi: these were ropes used to hold the footwear to the foot.
> Lingul: it was the equivalent of our reeds.
> Lunula: these were silver bands on the shoes of some important and senior magistrates, indicating prestige.

A curious fact is that when patricians and citizens of a high economic level went out on the streets, they used to wear leather shoes, but if they were visiting a banquet or were invited by an important host, they used to take with them a slave who carried their sandals for them. This is because when they arrived at their destination, they would exchange their shoes for the sandals again. The usual thing was that once the banquet or meal was over and they were already seated in their armchairs or in the parks and gardens of the villa, the slaves would then change their shoes for the sandals.

On the other hand, the question of whether or not they wore socks on a regular basis remains unknown. It is known that they used to wear strips of leather or wool in very cold weather to cover their joints and toes. They also used pieces of leather, but not tanned, to protect their feet during the difficult and hard work that was carried out, especially by the poorer social classes.

Some archaeological finds outside Spain confirm that Roman legionaries wore socks in winter climates, but even so they were not like today's socks, being more similar to those worn by the ancient Egyptians. That is to say that they wore separations between the toes in order to place the straps of the sandals more comfortably in the separations.

Beatriz Bueno, guide of MARQ in Lucentum.

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THE AUGUR

#Sabiaisque... Augurs were priests in ancient Rome who practised divination.

The augurs existed since the foundation of Rome, exercising a practice borrowed from the Greeks and Etruscans. Their corporation constituted one of the four prestigious priestly colleges in ancient Rome. It was an official office, although there were also private augurs. Only magistrates could consult the official augurs, in special enclosures. The official office was for life, compatible with magistracies or other priestly offices.

They had two types of books for their work: ritual books, which contained fixed formulas; and commentaries, which summarised their performances.

There were two kinds of augurs:
- Those who petitioned the gods and manifested the will of the gods through rituals.
- Those who deciphered the signs of the will of the gods, manifested without prior request. These were the most important, to the extent that by simply declaring that the auspices were unfavourable, they could annul assemblies, elections or any resolution of the magistrates.

This office was originally reserved for patricians, but after the Lex Ogulnia, it became available to commoners. During the monarchy, they were elected by the king. Under the Republic, they were at first elected by co-option in the College, and later they were elected by the people, except during the period of Sulla's dictatorship, when they reverted to the primitive system. Finally, in the Empire they were appointed by the emperor. The office was abolished by Emperor Theodosius.
The good augur is depicted as an agile, handsome young man, dressed in a green tunic, symbol of hope, his head covered with a white veil secured by a star. In his right hand he holds the augural staff (lituo) in a twisted form, and in his left hand he can be seen caressing a swan.

The evil augur is the figure of a stern-looking man with a sinister look. The robe he wears is the colour of a dry leaf.

Different types of divination were carried out:
- By signs from the sky. In the case of thunder and lightning, they estimated the favourable omen, if looking to the south, they fell on their left (right of Jupiter).
- The cries and flights of birds. They analysed the cawing of crows, rooks and owls. Also the flight of eagles, vultures and hawks.
- Intake of the sacred chickens. Auspiciousness was considered favourable if they had an appetite and unfavourable if they were inappetent.
- Positions and attitudes of mammals and reptiles.
- Extraordinary unforeseen events. Generally considered to be ominous.
- Divination in the disposition of animal guts.

Elena Noguera, guide at Lucentum.

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HALL OF IBERIAN CULTURE

Greek pottery in Contestania

Port guia 0806 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Terracotta pictures of women

Port guia 0205 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Hall of Iberian Culture from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Port guide 2204 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Port guia 2804 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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Hello everybody!

Today I want to talk to you about the Iberians and thus introduce one of the most spectacular rooms of the MARQ. This introduction will allow you to have a general knowledge about the Iberians and thus be able to know them and understand in an optimal way the publications related to this culture that you can already browse in our social networks or that will be published in the coming days.

The Iberian world constitutes a complex and very rich universe that developed in the 6th century BC and lasted until the 3rd century BC. The Iberian culture came to an end with the Second Punic War between the Romans and the Carthaginians, which took place on the Iberian Peninsula. With the victory of the Romans, Iberian resistance was short-lived and their territory was annexed to the Roman Empire. It should be noted that the 5th century BC was the period of greatest apogee of this culture.

The Iberians occupied several territories on the Iberian Peninsula, extending along the Mediterranean coast, including the west of Andalusia, as far as Cadiz and even the south of Huelva.

After knowing the territory and the time period of the presence of this culture in our land, we cannot delay to solve the question of the emergence of this culture and how it happened. This culture arose after the arrival of different peoples such as the Phoenicians who came from Tyre from the 9th century BC, the Greeks and the Carthaginians who arrived in our lands in order of mention. These peoples came to our Peninsula with the intention of extending their settlements throughout the Mediterranean, managing to found cities - for example, in the case of the Phoenicians, Cadiz, and in the case of the Greeks, Emporion, on the coast of Gerona. They took advantage of the rich resources of the peninsula to exploit them and enrich their new settlements, as well as to help their territories of origin. In the case of the Greeks, they took advantage of their new location to trade along the Mediterranean coast with the region that we can now call Iberia. These peoples were able to influence and influence the indigenous peoples to a great extent and thus helped to give birth to the Iberian culture. These influences can be found in sculpture, religion and writing, among other cultural factors.

Although nowadays we globally call the peoples who inhabited the territories mentioned above as Iberians, in fact, in today's post we call them this way, because their contemporaries called them this way. The writings called iber to different rivers of the Iberian Peninsula, such as the Ebro, the Tinto and the Tagus and called Iberia to the territory occupied today by the Iberian Peninsula, which in the Roman world would be translated as Hispania. However, they did not use this nomenclature, Iberians, to refer to the human groups found in this territory, but rather, as the sources state, they were divided and had their own names, which we can see on the map (figure 1).

Part of the territory of Alicante, according to the texts of Ptolemy and Pliny, the part extending from the Segura, Júcar and Vinalopó rivers was called Contestania. Therefore, there was no single name that encompassed all these groups. So if this nomenclature does not come from antiquity, why do we call them Iberians? Well, this comes from 20th century research, it is a name generated by researchers to encompass these peoples, because they were peoples who had elements in common, thus forming part of a homogeneous culture, elements such as sculpture, non-Indo-European languages or pottery painted with figures. Although it is true that there are differences between territories and aspects specific to them, for example, in Contestania we can see specific features such as the Elche-Archena style pottery (Figure 2) or the use of the Greek Ionic sign (Figure 3).

Despite the studies carried out, we still do not know different aspects of these Iberians and this is due to the fact that we are faced with a great problem: the Iberians wrote in their own language, but even today we do not know how to read it, we do not know how to translate it, because we have not found a kind of Rosetta Stone to help us solve this enigma, but we do know how to read it thanks to the fact that they used different known signifiers. To find out what this language sounded like in the MARQ, in the Iberian culture room, we have an audio recording of the reading of a text written in this language which surprises us, so that when we visit it we can get an idea of what it sounded like. Therefore, since we do not have our own sources that we can understand, research on these peoples is based on classical sources (Greek and Roman), on archaeological remains and on the narrative drawings that we find on Iberian pottery, an exceptional resource since we find representations that show us everyday scenes, work in the fields, hunting, or even wars and rituals, and so through these stories, we can know what the daily life of these people was like. In the room we find an audiovisual that shows us animated scenes found in ceramics, which have been found in the province of Alicante and so we can see by way of introduction what is explained throughout the room, through different archaeological remains among which we find some of those ceramics in which these representations have been found.

Once the Iberians have been presented here is the link to the video of the Iberian culture room, where we find some details of their daily life, religion, society or funerary world and also remember that you can find different publications about this and the other rooms of the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante, in our social networks so remember #quedateencasaconelmarq.

>> https://vimeo.com/4743114

Davinia Llopis Martínez, MARQ guide.

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Hello everybody!

Today in #QuedateencasaconelMARQ I am going to write about my favourite room in the Museum's permanent collection.

First of all, I would like to say that I really enjoy guiding the permanent exhibition of the MARQ, as it offers us a global vision of all the cultures that have passed through our territory throughout the ages, allowing us to get to know and appreciate the historical and archaeological wealth of the Province of Alicante.

Of all the rooms on the tour, I would choose the gallery dedicated to the culture of the Iberians. From my point of view, it is a very didactic and attractive room; the exhibition set-up is spectacular (audiovisuals, sounds, interactives), and it has some magnificent archaeological pieces (funerary sculpture, ceramics, everyday objects, weapons...) that give us a perfect insight into the different ways of life of this fascinating culture that inhabited the Iberian Peninsula before the arrival of the Romans.

If you dare to travel back in time to learn how the Iberians lived... You must visit this room! We are waiting for you!

Carlos Pérez, guide.

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IBERIAN FUNERARY SCULPTURE

Hello everyone!

Today in #yomequedoencasaconelmarq I am going to talk about funerary sculpture in the Iberian world, highlighting three examples that are on display in the permanent collection of the MARQ, specifically in the final area of the room that the museum dedicates to this period of our history, where emphasis is placed on the funerary world of this culture.

One of the most striking aspects of Iberian society is the use of sculpture as a decorative element in the funerary sphere. Thanks to archaeological work, many examples of sculptures of different types have been found inside the necropolises of the main settlements of this culture; human beings, animals (bulls, horses, birds, etc.) or fantastic monsters are represented with great mastery by this indigenous culture of the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula, which brings us, with its way of making art through sculpture, closer to its vision of the world of the afterlife.

Many of these sculptures flanked the entrances to the funerary spaces (necropolis) of these towns in order to protect their deceased. Many sculptures of this type were also made to mark tombs (in the form of pillar-stelae or turriform monuments) belonging to individuals of the local aristocracy, as we are dealing with a very hierarchical and perfectly structured society. The vast majority of these sculptures are made of limestone, an excellent material for carving but weak enough to survive the inclemency of the weather or the numerous clashes that probably took place between the inhabitants of different villages, as archaeology and research have shown us. This is why many of these sculptures are fragmented, making research work difficult.

In the final area of the MARQ's room dedicated to Iberian culture, there are some spectacular examples of funerary statuary on display. We find two bulls worked in limestone found in the province of Alicante. Both sculptures are incomplete, but very important from an iconographic and funerary point of view. They represent a bull, an animal widely represented in Iberian statuary, associated with the funerary world that would be linked to the protection of the deceased. One of the bulls was found in a well in the necropolis of Albufereta (Alicante) and the other was documented in the Iberian necropolis of El Molar (San Fulgencio). In the same area of the room, we also find another magnificent example of Iberian sculpture, the head of a griffin (a fantastic animal represented by many Mediterranean societies during Antiquity, especially by the Greeks) which was found in the necropolis of Cabezo de Lucero (Guardamar del Segura) and which shows the Greek influences on Iberian sculpture, which were produced thanks to the commercial exchange between the two cultures across the Mediterranean, thus facilitating the adoption of characteristic features of Greek art by Iberian society. All these sculptures would have a similar chronology (5th-4th century BC), corresponding to the moments of maximum cultural splendour.

In short, thanks to funerary archaeology we have been able to draw general conclusions about the importance of sculptural production destined for burial spaces, as well as to analyse and study the main characteristics of Iberian funerary sculpture.

Here is a link to download a publication dedicated to the Iberian necropolis of El Molar (San Fulgencio) which forms part of the Catalogue of the Provincial Archaeological Museum's collection. It explains the discovery and characteristics of the bull-shaped sculpture mentioned in this article, as well as other items of trousseau (jewellery, ceramics, Greek cups, amphorae, etc.) found in tombs:

https://marqalicante-classic-admin.qwair.com/Publicaciones/es/LA-NECROPOLIS-IBERICA-DE-EL-MOLAR-SAN-FULGENCIO-GUARDAMAR-DEL-SEGURA-P33.html

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide.

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THE IBERIAN SCRIPT

Hello everybody!

Today I want to talk to you about what is still a mystery today, the language and writing of the Iberians.

The Iberian culture left a record of its language in different writings, written on numerous supports. Today we know of more than 2,300 Iberian texts, although these are still untranslatable and therefore the words, which once spoke, are silent to our eyes today. However, it is worth noting that since the Renaissance, when the study of this language began, and up to the present day, there has been notable progress in our knowledge of it.

According to the remains found so far, this script was used between the end of the 5th century BC and the middle of the 1st century AD, from which time an Iberian inscription has been found on a bench in the Roman theatre of Sagunto. During this extensive period of almost 5 centuries, this language was written in a vast territory stretching from Roussillon (France) to Almeria, mixing with other scripts in Andalusia. From what has been studied so far, it seems to indicate that a single language was used throughout this territory, although this poses a "linguistic problem", since according to classical sources and archaeological remains, all this territory, which today we call Iberian, was occupied by independent peoples, each one called by its own name, so it is strange that all these peoples had the same language, although the how and why of this phenomenon is still unknown. It is true, however, that although it seems to be the same language, different signs or writing systems were used, specifically three: the so-called northeastern sign, used in the northern area; the southeastern sign used in the southern area; and finally, inscriptions have been found with a system that is the adaptation to the Iberian language of the Greek-Ionic alphabet (Figure 1). This last script, known as Greco-Iberian, was used from the 4th century BC in the territory between El Comtat-Alcoià (Alicante) and Mula (Murcia), i.e. in the territory of Contestania. Exceptionally, the Greek and Latin alphabets were used to write this language.

One of the most extraordinary advances and one of the first to be made on this subject was that made in 1940 by Gómez-Moreno. This researcher established the phonetic values of the set of writing signs, and thanks to this we now know how this language was pronounced, i.e. how it is read. This is thanks to the study carried out by this researcher and his colleagues before him of the Greco-Iberian inscriptions and the study of the Iberian legends that came from coins of the same mint as other coins with Latin legends, which had the same type of images. This was a major breakthrough in the investigation of the language and writing of the Iberians, although there are still many unknowns to be answered, some of the answers to these questions are beginning to come to light, such as the function of the Iberian language. This writing has been found on different supports, in ceramics, in sculpture (showing us the possible function of narration of the history behind them), in fusayoles, funerary stelae (although they already appear in these in a late period and due to Roman influence) and in the most common supports, above all of the Greco-Iberian writing, the lead plates. Therefore, despite having a narrative character, it would also have a commercial function.

Many of the things we know about this language are due to writings or external documents, such as the Roman bronze inscription written in the year 89 BC, where Neo Pompey, after a war victory, licenses some troops who have fought under his orders and lists in this inscription the people who were part of the troops.C, where Neo Pompey, after a war victory, licenses some troops that have fought under his orders and lists in this inscription the characters that were part of the troop, luckily they were Iberian characters and so it has been possible to see a series of proper names and how they are formed, most of them composed and with common formations, this is a great advance since now in the Iberian writings it is possible to identify, thanks to these compositions, the proper names.

To comment on another recent advance in research, we also know the name of three gods, which are very possibly Iberian, and are also known thanks to Latin texts, since in three different places, Jaén, Cartagena and Gerona, inscriptions have been found asking for favour or invoking a local god, in each of these the name of a different god is cited, Betatvun, Salaeco and Sertundu.

In addition to these discoveries, translations are being sought for some of the most common words found in the Iberian inscriptions, thanks to the Latin comparisons, the fact that they are accompanied by proper names or place names known from the writings of the Roman chroniclers. There is no doubt that Iberian is not an Indo-European language and that we are still waiting to find a "rosetta stone" that will help us to translate this language and thus better understand this culture that is still full of enigmas.

If you liked this article, you can find more publications related to this culture or others that inhabited the lands of Alicante, long before us, on our website and social networks, so #quedateencasaconelmarq

Davinia Llopis Martínez, MARQ guide.

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Hello, friends! Would you like to learn more about the characteristics of Iberian writing? Well, here we go.

The most characteristic feature of Contestania is the adoption of the Greek-Ionic alphabet to write the Iberian language, known as the Greco-Iberian script and one of the three variants of writing in the Iberian world.

The Greco-Iberian alphabet, which developed during the 6th and 3rd centuries BC, only appears in the Contestania area and only in very specific points in the province of Alicante. Important testimonies have been found in the sites of La Serreta in Alcoy, La Illeta in El Campello, in our province and in other enclaves in the region of Murcia.

I would like to point out that the Iberians wrote with a metal stylus on a lead plate, as lead is softer than iron and would be less expensive to engrave on.

This alphabet has been documented in the form of brief inscriptions on pottery at Illeta dels Banyets and in the form of texts on lead sheets at Serreta de Alcoy, which were trade documents.

Contestania is the name given today to the territory in the province of Alicante that was occupied by the Contestanos, who occupied our lands in Iberian times.

Thank you, friends, I hope you enjoyed it, see you soon!

Verónica Gregorio Ivars, MARQ customer service.

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RELIGION IN IBERIAN CULTURE

Hello everybody.

Today I want to talk to you about religion in Iberian culture.

The traces of the Iberian religion are not so numerous if we compare them with those left by other peoples of the past. However, thanks to the excavations carried out at various sites in the province of Alicante (La Albufereta in Alicante, Tossal de la Cala in Benidorm...), it has been possible to gather some fundamental testimonies for its understanding, many of which are exhibited in the room that the MARQ dedicates to Iberian Culture.

Religion in Iberian times had an indisputable social function, often acting as a link within the community itself. Many of the sacred objects that have come down to us come from religious or funerary spaces documented both in the open air and in sanctuary caves. All of them, in short, help us to understand the beliefs and rituals of those who inhabited these lands from the end of the 6th century BC until the change of era.

At Illeta dels Banyets (El Campello), terracotta figures have been found that are hollow on the inside and are known as firepots. All of them are related to other pieces found in different areas of the Mediterranean. They are in the shape of a female head and are reminiscent of a deity associated with fertility (probably a female deity).

Demeter or Tanit). It should be added that some have traces of polychromy (light tones for the skin, brown for the eyelashes and eyebrows, and reddish tones for the lips), although those that have come down to us, unfortunately, barely retain the original pigments.

The process through which different religions are recognised in a common cult is called religious syncretism. Thus, the sailors who arrived at the Illeta would see their beliefs represented through this process of assimilation and peaceful coexistence between beliefs and cults. The censers and votive offerings recovered would be the best proof of this.

In addition, a small stone altar from temple B is preserved in the Illeta, which is reminiscent of other similar figures found in the Punic world and once again demonstrates that this settlement was part of the mosaic of cultures that was the Mediterranean Sea.

#yomeetintheheartofthemarq

Anabel Castro, MARQ guide at the Illeta dels Banyets.

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Women in Iberian times

Hello everybody!

In today's #quedateencasaconelMARQ post, I would like to talk to you about women in the Iberian period. In order to study this subject, we can base ourselves on three possible sources that complement each other. Firstly, the texts of Greek and Latin historians, which, given the lack of being able to translate Iberian texts due to a lack of knowledge of the language, are the only ones on which we can base ourselves to extract information. Secondly, we have the representations of women in sculptures and ceramic decorations, and finally, the female objects found in grave goods.

A good starting point would be childhood and adolescence, but both the sources and the archaeological remains give very little information about these vital moments. This is due to the very high percentage of infant mortality during this period of our history due to problems during childbirth or the days following, malnutrition and even disease. Even so, a key moment for any individual has been recorded: the initiation rites. And, as is customary in Iberian and other cultures, all kinds of ceremonies were held, and in this case, during adolescence, young people (male and female) were subjected to initiation rites to welcome them into the community or to enter active social life. After all, they were the ones who would guarantee the succession of future generations.

As far as adulthood is concerned, there is much more evidence of the great prominence of women and, therefore, one of the most fundamental pillars of Iberian culture. Perhaps we should start with their role in domestic life. The main function of women was the protection of the home, and in wartime, they had to take charge of the whole household, including agriculture and livestock farming, regardless of their social status. It is possible that the frequent war situations favoured the social importance of women, who looked after the family and the village while the men were fighting. They were also part of the world of trade and textile production, since activities such as sewing were an exclusively female task. As a result of these tasks, objects such as needles, bone plates or fusayolas, among other instruments, have been found in the funerary trousseaux.

As for marriage, the average age of marriage was 15. Until that time, the Iberian woman was dependent on the father of the family, and once the marriage ceremony had taken place, she became dependent on her husband, but, despite this dependence, women could keep, administer and pass on their dowry. After all, it was they who received the inheritances and planned the marriages of their children.

Women's lives depended very much on their social status; in most cases, their function was purely domestic. However, in the upper social classes, women were associated with participation in the religious world, leaving a record of their actions as priestesses and even, in some cases, sacred prostitution, a practice that was permitted at this time, and those women who carried it out had great prestige in society.

On the other hand, thanks to the sculptures found, we can learn about the clothing of the elite women. Their heads were always covered with a veil that reached down to their waists, which could sometimes be complemented with ornaments, tiaras or even hats. The dress was usually plain and always accompanied by a tunic or an embroidered cloak; and their most common accessories were necklaces, rings, earrings and braided hair buns. Examples of these important women can be found in the Dama de Baza, Dama de Elche or the Dama Cabezo Lucero, the latter of which is on display in the MARQ.

In the religious world, it seems that women adopted various roles: faithful, priestesses or even divinities. In sanctuaries, there are votive offerings in the form of women in supplicant or offering attitudes, pregnant women, women linked to maternity and representations of breasts or phalluses. At Cerro de los Santos (Albacete), large sculptures were found of ladies who appear to be priestesses performing a libation ritual.

In these places, considered sacred, they have been associated with female divinities related to fertility and nature, assimilating her, in our closest case, to the Phoenician goddess Tanit. With the image of this goddess, terracotta pieces were made to burn perfumes or to place the first samples of the harvest, such as ears of wheat.

In short, women were an essential element in the reproduction of the family structure, transmitting the lineage and blood ties from generation to generation. Her role in society was not so much a question of gender as of status, i.e. if a woman belonged to the aristocracy or possessed sufficient wealth, her power and influence in socio-political and economic fields was equal to that of a man.

Lorena Gomis, MARQ Guide

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ORANTES

1TP5Did you know that...

In the religious world of the Iberian culture, the worshipper tries to approach the gods through rites that imply reverence, adoration and gratitude?

In most of them, offerings and sacrifices of varying degrees are made. Both make communication between men and gods possible.

This Vessel Offering gesture has also been linked to the ancient Mediterranean libation ritual (performed by Phoenicians, Greeks, Iberians). The libation consisted of a "Liquid Offering" poured on the ground, fire, at the end of a sacrifice, or on a deceased person.

The most representative example from the Iberian Peninsula in terms of vessels and libations is the "Lady of Galera" from Granada, a Phoenician figurine found in a tomb of a person of high aristocratic and priestly rank in the necropolis of Tútugi. It is an anthropomorphic female figurine holding a tray of offerings in her hands, illustrating a libation ritual on a throne flanked by sphinxes. Although this piece is very prestigious, it is different from the others, as we can see how she both drinks and drinks at the same time. This "offering votive offering" would have been part of a funerary trousseau.

The Cerro de Santos Sanctuary (Montealegre del Castillo - Albacete) offers the best and most abundant examples where votive offerings with vessels from Iberian culture have been found, most of them female figures with outstretched arms; hidden under the cloak; rigid hands holding the offering vessel with the fingers of the hands in parallel. The feet are almost always apart and the legs are hidden under the garments.

In the case of the male figures, we can see how the votive offerings carry a bowl in the right hand and hold the edge of the mantle with the left.

A Couple's votive offering has also been found; although normally these offerings were private, in this case, the male and female are united through the joint offering of the vessel.

Due to the quality and quantity of these votive offerings with "offering vessels", the Cerro de Santos sanctuary is one of the most important places of worship and pilgrimage in Iberian culture.

These goblet-shaped vessels are depicted with a gesture in which they are carefully carried and protected by votive offerings. It would seem that these vessels belong to a very fine ware, not intended for domestic use but rather for cultural and cultic use (offering vessels).

The "offering of vessels" can have multiple meanings depending on the content of the vessel, such as milk, mead, wine or water (very common in Iberian culture); the material of the offering vessel (stone, bronze or terracotta) and the gesture of the votive offering. In the female pieces, it has been observed that most of them present the vessel to the gods, but do not perform the action of pouring the liquid they contain, a gesture representative of libation. Although this could be defined as a double offering to the gods.

#yomeetintheMARQ

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DEPOSITS: ILLETA

VIDEOGUIDES ABOUT ILLETA DELS BANYETS

The technicians who make Illeta possible

Port yac 0806 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Prehistory in Illeta

Port yac 0406 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Cave Paintings in Illeta

Port yac 0506 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Use of plant fibre

Port yac 3005 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

Geomorphology of Illeta

YouCut_20200521_100500952 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

THE IBERIAN WOMAN

Port yac 1905 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

GREEK CERAMICS

Port yac 15052 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

NEOLITHIC IN LA ILLETA

Port yac 1405 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

SAVING THE QUEEN'S BATHS

Port yac 1105 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

IBERIAN ASTRONOMY

Port yac 1205 v2 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

THE GREEKS IN ILLETA

Port yac 0905 2 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

LAGARES

Port yac 0705 2 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

EXVOTOS

Port yac 0405 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

THE QUARRY

Port yac 2804 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

THE CLOTHING OF THE IBERIANS

Port yac 2304 2 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

IBERIAN GOLD AND SILVERWARE

Port yac 2204 1 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

FIRST TESTIMONIES OF THE EXISTENCE OF ILLETA

Port yac 2004 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

ALMAZARA ÍBERA

Port YAC 1304 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

LOCATION OF ILLETA

QuedateencasaconelMARQ Sites 21 March from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

ROMAN BATHS

ELENA from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

HOW ILLETA WAS SAVED FROM DESTRUCTION

Anabel 2703 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

ENHANCEMENT OF THE ILLETA DELS BANYETS SITE

Port yac 0204 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

IBERIANS IN LA ILLETA

Port Yac 0904 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES: Barranc dels Garrofers

Another interesting site in the province of Alicante is Abric II del Barranc dels Garrofers, where a human figure with a straight body and arms in a handle is represented. The large head carries a plume of seven feathers; underneath, two parallel and curved lines are identified with ornaments or exaggerated facial tattoos. This singular image, unique in schematic art, has been adopted by the MARQ as a mascot for its educational activities, LLUMIQ, which also gives its name to the Youngest Friends Club, the Llumiq Clubwhich currently has more than 13,000 children registered, up to the age of 16.

Mª Paz Gadea, MARQ Guide

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

La Pastora Cave

Photography: A Blanes

Port Guia 0604 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

Cova d'en Pardo

Port guia 1304 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

Peña Negra

Hello to all of you!
Today in #yomequedoencasaconelmarq I am going to talk to you about the importance of the Peña Negra site (Crevillente, Alicante) in the study of the final moments of Prehistory in our territory and about some of the pieces that have been found there and that are currently on display in the Prehistory Room of the MARQ.

The Peña Negra site is located in the Sierra de Crevillente, in the Bajo Vinalopó region. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in our territory in terms of size and the value of the archaeological remains found. Chronologically, it is located in the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, also known as the Orientalizing period (9th-7th century BC), as it was at this time that the Phoenicians from the Eastern Mediterranean settled on the Levantine coasts of the peninsula and began to trade with the native populations of the area, for example with the people of this settlement located in the northern part of the Crevillente area. In chronological terms, and by way of summary, we are in that intermediate period of transition between Prehistory and History known as Protohistory, a key period in the formation of Iberian culture, as we will discuss later.

The settlement was a large metal-producing urban centre that was also very active in trade, as archaeological finds indicate. The city was walled and had a highly hierarchical and perfectly organised society. The Phoenician colonisers who settled in the coastal area of the south of the province of Alicante soon set their sights on this metal-producing city to fulfil their commercial objectives. Probably in Peña Negra large commercial transactions were carried out between the locals and the Phoenicians, which is why Oriental luxury articles and objects have been found, probably brought by the Phoenicians from the Eastern Mediterranean to these lands. Among the most striking and exotic objects found at the site, we can highlight rings, necklaces, silver, Egyptian scarabs and a spectacular gold sheet decorated using the technique of embossing, which highlights the intense commercial activity between the Phoenicians and the native populations of our lands. Most of these objects are on display in the final area of the MARQ's Prehistory room, where the transition between the Orientalising period, which marks the end of Prehistory, and the beginning of the Iberian culture, which marked the beginning of the Ancient Age, is discussed.

From these commercial and cultural exchanges between Phoenicians and indigenous populations, the Iberian culture emerged around the 6th century BC, which was nourished in many aspects (social, artistic, religious) by the colonising cultures of our territory, such as the Phoenicians and later the Greeks. It is for all these reasons that the Peña Negra site offers us, through archaeology, a perfect X-ray of those moments of transition between the final stage of Prehistory and the emergence of the Iberian culture in the territory of the current Province of Alicante, being one of the most important and best known protohistoric settlements of a commercial nature in Alicante.

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

La Sagra

Hello friends!

Today I come to talk to you about the archaeological site of La Sarga, in Alcoy.

On 19 August 1951, several members of the Centro Excursionista de Alcoy (Alcoy Hiking Centre), archaeology enthusiasts, visited a place where several burial sites had been found years before: the Cova Foradada (Foradada Cave). When they arrived, they quickly noticed the grandeur of the surroundings and the existence, on the other side of the ravine, of large rock shelters, which they decided to approach to get a closer look. When they arrived, a cry flooded the place... EUREKAAAAAAAA!; they had just made one of the most outstanding archaeological discoveries in the province of Alicante, an exceptional set of cave paintings.

The archaeological site of La Sarga is a unique collection of parietal art, considered by archaeologists and researchers to be an exceptional enclave due to its good state of conservation, the large number and diversity of images it contains and the privileged setting in which it is located. The three artistic styles of the Neolithic period identified in the Mediterranean Arc are represented here: Macro-Schematic, Levantine and Schematic, which makes this site the most complete and complex Neolithic "sanctuary" on the eastern façade of the Iberian Peninsula, where several generations of farmers and livestock breeders
left a testimony of their ideas, beliefs and understanding of the world.

For all these reasons, the site was included in 1998 by UNESCO on the World Heritage list, as part of the great group of Rock Art of the Mediterranean Arc of the Iberian Peninsula, which includes 705 sites, 305 of which are located in the Valencian Community.

Of the three shelters that make up the archaeological site, perhaps the most outstanding and paradigmatic is Shelter I, as it provides valuable information on the chronological sequence of the different pictorial manifestations that developed throughout the Neolithic period in Alicante. Specifically, in this shelter we can differentiate between macro-schematic motifs and others typical of Levantine Art. The superimposition of the latter on the former allows us to confirm the greater antiquity of the macro-schematic horizon.

As for the macro-schematic motifs of Abrigo I, the serpentiforms - sinuous motifs that rise upwards - stand out, as well as the representation of a "orante" - a human figure with a circular head, raised arms and pointed fingers. Apart from the orante represented in the Neolithic sanctuary of Pla de Petracos (Castell de Castells), another of the great sites in Alicante included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites, there is a movable parallel that has confirmed the dating of Macro-schematic Art in the Ancient Neolithic: the vase from the Cova de l'Or (Beniarrés), with a chronology of between 5,600 and 5,000 BC, so the paintings must be of the same chronology. Therefore, we are faced with artistic manifestations that allow us to approach the mentality of those first communities of farmers and stockbreeders who settled in our territory more than 7,000 years ago. In the orante of the Cova de l'Or vase, the vulva is indicated by the impression on the clay of the natis of a cockle shell (cardial pottery), which leads us to believe that it is a representation of a woman, perhaps a goddess of fertility, a divinity that presides over the pantheon in different Mediterranean cultures of the Neolithic, whose cult seems to be directly related to fertility rituals of the earth, animals and women.

Some time later, we cannot say for sure, although we are probably talking about several centuries, another group arrived at this place, which had already been used by their ancestors as a sanctuary, to paint a completely different type of images, much more realistic and naturalistic, which show us more mundane scenes related to their daily life: hunting scenes, gathering, with children...; we are talking about Levantine Art. In Abrigo I, they depicted a hunting scene showing several deer wounded by arrows and bleeding, which seem to be stalked by a group of hunters who follow the trail of blood, carrying bows and arrows, and wearing a plume of feathers on their heads. These are also Neolithic paintings, related to farming and herding communities in the area, but later than those that produced the macro-schematic motifs. It is curious to see how this place continued to be venerated as a sacred place generation after generation.

With all this, we can conclude today's post by affirming the symbolic importance, not only religious but also social, that this unique place had for several generations among different Neolithic groups in the area. A great Neolithic sanctuary, a place of social cohesion and aggregation, where they went periodically to celebrate religious activities but also to exchange knowledge, to find a partner and avoid the problems derived from consanguinity, to carry out commercial exchanges... In short, and according to the words of UNESCO, La Sarga must be understood as "the largest group of rock art that we can find in Europe", which "offers an exceptional portrait of human life in an essential period of human cultural evolution".

Mª Paz Gadea, MARQ guide.

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

Cova del'Or

Hello to all of you!

We continue with more articles in #yomequedoencasaconelmarq, today I am going to tell you about an impressive site: the Cova de l'Or (Beniarrés, Alicante), one of the most important sites of the Ancient Neolithic (VI - V millennium BC) of all the Spanish Levant, both for its archaeological relevance and for the richness and variety of the objects and archaeological finds documented in this cave. This site has a close relationship with our museum as the MARQ has carried out several excavation campaigns directed by Jorge Soler (Curator of Prehistory and MARQ archaeologist). Currently, most of the objects found at the site are in the Museum of Prehistory in Valencia, and to a lesser extent in the MARQ and the Municipal Archaeological Museum "Camil Visedo Moltó" in Alcoy.

The cave is located in the municipality of Beniarrés in the Alicante region of El Comtat and was discovered by Rafael Pardo Ballester in the 1930s. Among the archaeological remains discovered in the Cova de l'Or are spoons made of bone, tools worked in polished stone, elements of personal adornment, ceramics, hand mills made of stone, remains of carbonised cereals and domestic animals that perfectly document the agricultural and livestock practices of the people who occupied this site located in the Serpis Valley. Studies of the archaeological finds documented in the area have revealed its occupation by the first farmers and stockbreeders who populated the Mediterranean side of the peninsular territory around the 6th millennium BC, probably from the Near East, as indicated by the latest research and interpretations on the spread of the
Neolithic in our province.

One of the highlights of this site is the large quantity of ceramics found with cardial impressed decoration. This technique consists of making decorative motifs on the unfired ceramic surface. To do this, impressions were made with the edge of the toothed shell of the cardium (cockle). The origin of this type of pottery is documented in the Near East (on the coasts of Lebanon and Syria). From this Eastern Mediterranean area, the technique of cardial ceramics spread throughout the Mediterranean, passing through the Italic Peninsula and the South of France, reaching the Levantine coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

This is a long and complex process of cultural diffusion that began in the east and reached the western end of the European continent. Another fundamental aspect of the people who inhabited this place is the advanced bone industry, visible in the objects worked from this material. In the Cova de l'Or, from spoons to necklace beads worked in bone with a high degree of sophistication and millimetric perfection have been documented.

The large number of objects and the exceptional nature of the site have given rise to numerous interpretations as to its functionality, the most plausible proposal (according to research) being that the cave was used as a place of social significance, which also had a space reserved for storing the surplus cereal of the people who lived in the immediate surroundings of the cave.

In conclusion, the Cova de l'Or is an emblematic site of the ancient Neolithic of the peninsular territory, whose cavity witnessed the development of the first agricultural and livestock farming communities in Alicante. On 28th April 2007, the MARQ and the Beniarrés Town Council inaugurated the

The Interpretation Room of the archaeological site in a municipal building next to the Town Hall, which can be visited since then, was joined years later by the Municipal Museum of Climate, on the upper floor of the same building. At present, the Diputación de Alicante, through its architecture department, is working with the technical team of the MARQ on the museumisation of the cave, which will allow it to be opened to the public in the near future.

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide.

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

l'Albir

IMAGE: http://comunitatvalenciana.com/

Hello to all of you!

We keep talking about archaeology and we keep talking about our archaeological heritage. Today I am going to talk about the Roman site of Albir (Alfàs del Pi, Alicante). In the final area of the Roman period room of the MARQ, we can find two recreations of burials (an adult buried on tiles and a child buried inside an amphora of African origin cut in half), several liturgical jars and a pair of soles of Roman sandals (caligae) that were found in the area of the necropolis of this site.

This settlement is part of a large archaeological complex dating from the Late Imperial period (4th century AD - 5th century AD). The site was discovered at the beginning of the 1980s and consists of a production villa, the thermal baths linked to the villa and an extensive necropolis in which a private mausoleum stands out, where the family of the domini (owner of the villa) was buried. This mausoleum is a very unique building within the Roman funerary architecture of our lands, there being only one similar example in the Camí del Molí de Frares (Orriols, Valencia). The study of the necropolis of this site provides us with a great deal of information on the funerary customs of the final stage of the Roman Empire, a time when there was already a transition between Roman and Christian funerary customs.

In the excavations carried out in 2010, the project for the enhancement of the villa's thermal baths was implemented. The Villa Romana de l'Albir open-air museum opened its doors in the spring of 2011, after the work carried out by the Alfàs del Pi Town Council and the University of Alicante to recover and enhance the site, together with the environment in which it is located, turned it into a unique enclave that enhances and boosts tourism, heritage and cultural offerings in the municipality. Thanks to the wide variety of educational resources at the site (3D reconstructions, virtual guide with augmented reality, models, panels), visitors can learn how the baths of a Roman villa functioned in the Lower Imperial period.

Currently the site is still being excavated, so it is not excluded that in the future new rooms of the villa will be included in the museum project. The Roman villa of Albir is one of the most important Roman sites in the province of Alicante, being a key settlement for the study of the Roman rural population of our lands. Thanks to the large collection of trousseau that we have on display in the MARQ showcases from this site, we can offer a little piece of the rural history of this beautiful town in the Marina Baixa during the Roman period.

Carlos Pérez Soler. Guide to the MARQ.

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

La Pobla de Ifach

IMAGE: http://www.calpe.es/ver/206/la-pobla-d-ifac.html

Hello to all of you!

In today's article I am going to talk about the Medieval Pobla de Ifach (Calpe) and the exceptional Gothic capital that was found during the 2016 excavation campaign directed by Dr. José Luis Menéndez Fueyo (MARQ exhibition technician and Archaeologist - Director of the Medieval Site of Pobla de Ifach). This Gothic capital was temporarily exhibited for the first time to the public in the main lobby of the MARQ during 2017. >> More information

La Pobla de Ifach was founded as an urban settlement at the end of the 13th century on the initiative of the then King Pere III of the Crown of Aragon. A few years later, it was the Admiral of the Crown of Aragon, Roger de Llúria, who received the royal privilege (commissioned by King Jaume II) to populate this territory with Christian people from the surrounding rural villages. Roger de Llúria and, later, his second wife, Saurina d'Entença, were in charge of administering the territory and building the different parts of this urban enclave with a defensive character located on the Peñón de Ifach (a rocky tombolo, declared a Natural Park by the Spanish government).

Generalitat Valenciana since 19 January 1987, located opposite the present-day town of Calpe). This settlement was partially destroyed in the midst of the Castilian-Aragonese conflict (1359) and, later (around 1400), the enclave was abandoned.

As mentioned above, in the summer excavation campaign of 2016 the research team led by José Luis Menéndez Fueyo discovered a Gothic capital of palms that would have been located in one of the windows of the two-storey feudal power building that housed the local authority and the administration of the Casa de Llúria, baptised by the MARQ excavation team as Domus Llúria. This two-storey building would also have had a domestic function and accommodation for the troops on the lower level. Palm capitals with rosettes are common in Gothic constructions linked to the feudal power of the Crown of Aragon between the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. This type of capital has been documented in numerous Gothic constructions in present-day Catalonia (mainly Girona and Barcelona), Valencia, Mallorca and, as mentioned above, in the Domus LLúria de Ifach in Calpe, the latter being the first and only finding of this type in the lands of the present-day Province of Alicante.

The discovery and study of the Ifach capital is yet another piece in the ongoing research study carried out by the MARQ excavation team in La Pobla, a unique and genuine settlement that is part of the process of consolidation of the Kingdom of Valencia at the end of the 13th century.

Carlos Pérez Soler. Museum Guide.

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

Benalua

Iberian loom from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

Tabarca

Port guia 1105 from MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante on Vimeo.

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

LA COVA DEL BARRANC DEL MIGDIA (THE MIGDIA RAVINE CAVE)

Hello to all of you!

Today in #yomequedoencasaconelmarq I am going to talk about the Cova del Barranc del Migdia, a small natural cave located in the Montgó (Marina Alta). In 2013, the MARQ collected through an exhibition the most important works and findings made in this prehistoric cave between 2009 and 2012. In this article I will talk about the characteristics of the cave, the archaeological elements found and the cave paintings that have been documented inside it.
The Cova del Barranc del Migdia is located at a certain height, so access to it must be done by climbing some 20 or 30 metres. It was found by chance and relatively recently, as it was discovered in 1989. Thanks to the exceptional conservation conditions of the cave, it is one of the most important prehistoric sites in our lands.

The cave was used as a burial place by the inhabitants of this area throughout the 3rd millennium BC (Copper Age). It was subsequently abandoned until the 3rd-4th centuries AD when it was used as an occasional place of refuge for the Romans who grazed in these lands. Material remains associated with the Middle Ages have also been documented, but the cave was no longer in continuous use at this time.

In terms of funerary use, the cave was used as a place for collective burials that could indicate certain family ties or belonging to the same clan. As far as archaeological materials are concerned, countless items of grave goods have been documented that accompanied the deceased in the graves. The most abundant archaeological materials are arrows and flint blades, although polished stone tools, ceramics and some metal objects have also been documented. In the excavations carried out inside the cave, remains of burnt wood have been recovered, possibly from fires that were lit in the cave while the burials were being carried out.

Another important aspect to highlight is that in the deepest and most inaccessible part of the cave there is a series of cave paintings in red and black in the schematic style, probably dating from the end of the Neolithic and beginning of the Copper Age. There is also an incised zigzag motif in one of the sections at the end of the cave. It is possible that these paintings had a religious meaning for these prehistoric societies, although it is difficult to draw a clear conclusion because most of the motifs are abstract representations, the meaning of which is unknown to us.

In short, this is one of the best examples of a prehistoric cave used as a burial site and rock art sanctuary. The Cova del Barranc del Migdia is one of the few cases in which the prehistoric burial deposit has been preserved unaltered and the cave paintings documented inside the cave are associated with the same archaeological context as the burials.

Carlos Pérez, MARQ guide

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ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES

The Tossal de la Cala

The Tossal de la Cala Iberian site

Hello, friends of MARQ.

The Tossal de la Cala is a site of Iberian chronology, an oppidum or fortified settlement with a period of occupation between the 4th and 1st centuries BC, which was chosen by these people as a place of habitat and a point of refuge for navigation, due to its strategic position. In this sense, the site stands in a privileged location, specifically on a promontory located in the Finestrat or Morales cove, flanked by the sea and by the mouth of the Cala ravine, which constituted a major communication route inland, through which both the products arriving by sea and those of an agricultural nature from the inland mountains passed.

Unfortunately, at present the site is practically invisible, due to the voracious property speculation carried out in the area, mainly from the 1960s and 1970s onwards, which meant that it was completely surrounded by buildings and was mutilated, as a large part of the site has disappeared. Furthermore, it was completely disconnected from its raison d'être, the sea, making it very difficult to obtain a general and objective view of the occupation and function of this enclave in the past.

The settlement was created on the basis of an organised urban layout, where the dwellings were arranged along the contour lines, creating terraces at different heights. Access to the settlement was through an L-shaped entrance located on one side of the powerful one-metre thick wall that surrounded and protected the settlement. Most of the documented dwellings consisted of two rooms and seem to have had a first floor, given the recurrent appearance of the remains of staircases inside them. All of them were built by creating a stone plinth, on top of which were adobe walls made of characteristic greenish-coloured clays; the roof was made of trunks and branches covered with mud, and the floors were made of rammed-earth paving.

A large part of the archaeological remains that were found during the different excavation campaigns are currently deposited in the MARQ: metal objects, ceramic vessels, terracotta figures... The analysis and study of these materials provides invaluable information that helps us to better understand what their daily life was like, what their economy was based on, as well as different aspects related to their spiritual and funerary world.

Among the different objects recovered and exhibited at the MARQ, a large iron saw stands out, most probably used by two individuals, each located at one end, to cut down trees, perhaps for making boats, given the number of nails found and weights that were possibly used as weights in fishing nets. Hooks, shuttles and needles for nets have also been found, which, once again, suggest the existence of fishermen in the area and link this site to a deep seafaring vocation.

If you want to know more about this site, I recommend the book "El yacimiento ibérico de El Tossal de la Cala", which you can find in the publications section of our website.

https://marqalicante-classic-admin.qwair.com/Publicaciones/es/YACIMIENTO-IBERICO-DE-EL-TOSSAL-DE-LA-CALA-Nuevo-estudio-de-los-materiales-depositados-en-el-MARQ-correspondientes-a-las-excavaciones-de-Jose-Belda-y-Miquel-Tarradell-P84.html

Greetings.

Mª Paz Gadea, MARQ guide.

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Trephined skull

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Costamar pitcher

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Triangular courtyard house

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