– Spanish archaeologists reconstruct Bronze Age life in La Mancha
Archaeologists from the Group of Recent Prehistoric Studies (GEPRAN) of the Universidad de Granada, Spain, have reconstructed for the first time, in a scientific and systematic way, life in the Bronze Age in the site of La Motilla del Azuer, La Mancha (Spain).
The site of the Motilla del Azuer in the municipal area of Daimiel (province of Ciudad Real), represent one of the most peculiar types of prehistoric settlements in the Iberian Peninsula.
From the 20th century, the motillas were erroneously considered to be burial mounds.
But now, a recent study by UGR experts has proved it was a fortification surrounded by a small settlement and a necropolis.
According to professors Trinidad Najera Colino and Fernando Molina Gonzalez, who have been studying the motillas since 1974, the structures, artificial mounds, four to 10 metres high, which occupied the region of La Mancha in the Bronze Age between 2200 and 1500 BC, are a result of the destruction of a stone fortification of central plan with several concentric walled lines.
Its distribution in the plain of La Mancha, with equidistanes of four to five kilometres, affects river meadows and low areas where the existence of pools was quite frequent until recent dates, the researchers wrote in their study.
They said the mound of the fortification, which has been recovered, has a diameter of about 50 metres, and is composed of a tower, two walled enclosures and a large courtyard.
The central core is composed of a tower of masonry of square plan, with seven metres high east and west fronts and an interior accessible through ramps inlaid in narrow corridors, which confer a particular nature to the place, they said.
According to the archaeologists, the settlement of the Azuer contains the oldest well found in the Iberian Peninsula.
The inside of this type of walled enclosures protected basic resources such as water, collected from the phreatic stratum through the well, and was also used to store and process cereals on a large scale, to keep the livestock occasionally and to product pottery and other home-made products, whose remains have also been found, they said.
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