1-the geometric art of the iberian schist plaques

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THE GEOMETRIC ART OF THE IBERIAN SCHIST PLAQUES

Cristina Lopes1

Favors are expensive, friendship is priceless

Os favores são caros, a amizade não tem preço4. A “síndrome das placas loucas”

V. S., Gonçalves

ABSTRACT

The so called “Alentejans” schist plaques display a very strong personality in terms of graphic language, their geometric art allowed to reevaluate the more usual interpretativeapproaches, and indicate a distinctive of the identity of the dead.The possible inspiration for the aesthetic style of the schematic plaques and the

anthropomorphic character are considered. The rules of the graphic presentation:motives, shapes and different types of drawing.Since the nineteenth century, archaeologist discovered engraved stone plaques inNeolithic graves in southern Portugal and Spain. These plaques about the size of one´spalm, usually made of slate, and incised with geometric or more rarely zoomorphic oranthropomorphic design will be addressed in its various components.The geometric art of the Iberian schist plaques can be approached from the iconographicand aesthetic outset terms. The possible relationships between schematic art and theexpressed patrons are kept in the memory and identity of Iberian schist plaques.

INTRODUCTION

Of the various artifacts we find in megalithic art, the engraved schist plaques are thosethat immediately present a striking character in the symbolism they contain. It isacknowledged that “there was a grammar for decorative engraved schist plaques”

(Gonçalves 2006: 46), which can be segmented into several analyses as synthesis of geometric motifs that allows to establish an identity for these votive artifacts. Theplaques have been found especially among the dead buried in Iberian megalithic tombs,like dolmens or tumuli, but also in tholoi, funerary monuments of later date.The material is a piece of schist, cut into varying length, usually between 8 and 25 cm,mainly dark blue (with different nuances) or sometimes green (serpentine). It isgenerally trapezoidal shape, sometimes roughly triangular or quadrangular, rarely inother format.Its geometric art is quite informative of a phase in which the group developed a socialorganization and more complex economy as a synthetic geometric art. The angularmotifs are rare in the European Paleolithic art which is mostly figurative rather thangeometric; these patterns appear, especially from the Neolithic and remain until the endof the Bronze Age.The rock art in Alentejo, occurs mainly on river rocks, and usually rounded motifspredominate. In mobile art, on the contrary, it appears that there is a preference for the

1Mestranda da Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa; E-mail: [email protected]



recurring geometric motifs. In schist plaques, excluding the eye/sun, round shapes arepractically absent.

RULES OF GRAPHIC PRESENTATION: MOTIFS, SHAPES AND

DIFFERENT TYPES OF DRAWING

The engraved schist plaque are mostly organized in fields, from top to bottom, the firstcorresponding to a “head” separated or not, then a “body” with elements differentiatingthe individual, crowed or not, and an area that marks the final end or bottom of theplaque.

Fig.1 – Standard nomenclature (From Gonçalves, 2004)

Fig.1, Drawing of an “ideal” plaque with most components of analysis, and their

standard nomenclature. On the left, from the top: the head, separator of head-body, bodydelimiter of bottom. On the right the perforation for suspension, vertical division “head

within the head”, sidebands, and the dominant motives, the triangles with vertices up in

band

This image is filled with geometric motifs that are of different types:1. triangles;2. Zigzag lines;3. Zigzag bands;4. Squares or rectangles;5. Vertical or horizontal bands, straight or curved, usually filled.



Some have the outline in order to underline even more clearly the anthropomorphiccharacter. Like the example of Figure 2 and 3.

Fig.2 – (From Gonçalves, 2004)

Fig.3 - (From Gonçalves, 2004)

The types of drawing are geometric Fig.4 - (From Gonçalves, 2004)



There is a “syndrome of crazy plaques”, with the body organized by the central, verticalstructuring, (fig. 5).

Fig.5 - (From Gonçalves, 2004)

No absolute chronology is available for the “syndrome of crazy plaques”. However, if

date for large plaque j.8-667, from Herdade de Santa Margarida, Beta-166422: 2920-

2870 Cal BC at 2 sigma (Gonçalves), as terminus post quem, the “Crazy plaque” STAMH.8-3-5 corresponds perhaps to a time compatible with the timing of the depositionfuneral Cm-6, which lead us to a period between 2870-2500 BC, then in the secondquarter of the third millennium.

INTERPRETATIVE APPROACHES

One of the most common theories suggests that the schist plaques of the gravestonesfound in several burial structures in Iberia (also found in some sites) are representation

of the Mother Goddess (Almagro Gorbea 1973; Gonçalves, 1999, 2004a, 2006). Thistheory has had great grip. We can realize that the Goddess is an iconographicrepresentation of the life force, accompanying the dead. In addition, the first half of thethird millennium BC was a culmination of the “Sun Eye Goddess”, common in metal

societies of South Iberian Peninsula. These examples of mobiliary art, used in pottery orbone, however in the Alentejo, including the peninsula of Lisbon, south to the Algarve,including the area of Huelva and Badajoz, this symbols of the Goddess emerge inassociation with the geometric art of the schist plaques.

Katina Lillios, after analyzing the data on the manufacture and distribution of theplaques, considers that most of the Iberian plaques are genealogical records of the dead

that served as durable markers of identity of the local and regional groups. Theserecords were to legitimize and perpetuate an ideology of social difference, in the late



Neolithic, in what the author calls “Heraldry for the Dead”. These records were made byrecording geometric patterns on stones to secure lines of peninsular clans and identifymembers of their elites, a system of social communication obviously practised longbefore the introduction of alphabets. The systematic analysis of graphic codes, held inmore than 1.100 plaques, collected in South Iberian megalithic tombs, is published

online, the ESPRIT (Engraved Stone Plaques Registry and Inquiry Tool)http://research2.its.uiowa.edu/iberian/ .

According to Manuel Calado (2010), of paramount importance are the space issuesinvolving in comparing the geographical distribution of the plaques, its core area of origin and the distribution of rock art in Central Alentejo, including the Alqueva DamComplex. The inspiration of the style of schist plaques may also be associated with fiberarts, in an ethnographic/anthropological approach, as the anthropomorphic character issuggested. At the site of “Águas Frias”, Alandroal, the excavation, led by him, found allstages of production well represented, and establish new perspectives. He advanced the

possibility of a single production center, associated with the rock sanctuary of Alqueva,that could fit an interpretation of the plaques as icons “including any mother-goddesses,other deities or even ancestors” (Draft, 2010) that worked in parallel with the other idols

recognized in the Iberian South (Hurtado, 2010). It can be assumed that the designs of the plaques could be decided by customers (based on an established iconographicprogram) and executed by the artists.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUDING REMARKS

On the late Neolithic pottery, mostly smooth, we can see that sometimes geometricmotives similar to those of the schist plaques appear. In a later period, the Chalcolithic,the plaques can be considered as one of the inspirations for the symbolic beakerspottery, as well as the ornaments of burnished Final Bronze Age ceramics.

Their being the possibility of ethnic markers (Bueno, 2010; Hurtado, 2010), through therepresentation of iconographic specialized pantheons, is plausible if we considered therespecific entities with specific graphic representation in determinate area. That clearlydemonstrates the importance of geometric art that has been preserved in the memory

and identity of the Iberian schist plaques.The interpretative model advanced by Isabel Lisboa and developed by Katina Lillios, asheraldic type records (Lisboa, 1985; Lillios, 2002, 2003, 2008), is quite systematic andimportant, but it set apart from the magical-religious approach and the co-relation withother approaches that derive from it.

The Portuguese project “PLACA NOSTRA” coordinated by Professor VictorGonçalves has developed the research of these votive artifacts. It has studied amongothers the phenomenon of reuse of these artifacts in the megalithic monuments in theregion of Évora (Gonçalves, 2003), with the reuse through cutting and polishing. Tomake a new recording can be several explanations. The pragmatic one can be the law of

http://research2.its.uiowa.edu/iberian/





least effort. Or it can be assumed that the symbolism of an original old board could beimplemented in a symbolic act again, creating a new magic-religious situation. Anotherinteresting study by this working group, works at “syndrome of mad plaques”. Found out that everything seems to indicate, that this syndrome is a result of a degenerativestructural concept, of the symmetry in the space filling the support.

To Professor Emmanuel Anati it could be a kind of churinga, common among theAustralian Aborigines. This artifact is of modest dimensions as the schist plaques, isoval and elongated size similar to one´s palms, and are engraved on or painted with thesigns of ancestral identity. The raw material, wood, bone, horn or stone, comes from thesacred area, where dwell the ancestral spirits, so the object has a pedigree of provenance. According to oral tradition the churinga is part of theirs conceptualframework. The identity of an individual is determined by the churinga. When awoman is pregnant elders define the identity of the child, setting out which ancestor will

be the reincarnation, and give it a totemic symbol. This artifact is mainly reserved formale individuals although in central australian desert have been found churinga forladies.

It could be observed that in the history of the engraved schist plaques, there was initiallya symmetric geometric representation, in a second phase the syncretic fusion with theiconographic and aesthetic associated with the Goddess of the Eyes of Sun, and in athird the degeneration of the structuring concept as a terminal point of the process.

In the current state of knowledge it seems obvious to me that the diversity of graphic

solutions, using the same geometric art, evokes questions concerning the socialdimension of the subsystem and the magical-religious agency among others.

Explanation depends upon the paradigm you follow. For instant, some discuss theadvantages that would accrue from aligning archaeological explanation to Marxisttheory and in particular the power the Hegelian dialectic can provide. Which Neo-Darwinists, prefer the explanatory power of natural selection, while processual andinterpretative approaches favour, respectively, science and social theory. If there is anexplanation it is that change is somehow inherent in the system.

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