An archaeological dig in Badajoz, in the southwestern Spanish region of Extremadura, has uncovered several artifacts belonging to the pre-Roman Tartessian culture.
The excavation yielded five stone faces dating to the 5th century B.C. The faces are idealized and feature jewelry, their backs being smooth, indicating that they were reliefs. This latest discovery was made in the course of investigating a buried precinct.
No such objects had been previously linked to the Tartessians, albeit other Iberian findings from around the same period include realistic renderings of human faces, as is the case of the Lady of Elche and similar stone busts.
Whereas Tartessians are generally thought to have been aniconic, abstaining from making anthropomorphic depictions of gods, some are claiming that these newly discovered visages might be meant to represent deities.
Tartessian culture developed in southwestern Spain between the 8th and 4th centuries B.C. It traded with, and was culturally influenced by Phoenicians, and likely spoke a non-Indo-European Iberian language (albeit displaying Celtic borrowings) that is possibly related to Basque. Some investigators have speculated that Tartessian was a Celtic tongue, but this is a minority view.
The finding was presented by a delegate of the Superior Council for Scientific Investigations (CSIC), Margarita Panequ, the director of the Institute of Archaeology of Merida (IAM), Pedro Mateos, and colleagues.
