WE RECOGNIZE
THE ALMOLOYA-BASTIDA PROJECT, CRADLE OF THE ARGAR CULTURE, WINS THE III NATIONAL AWARD OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY PALARQ FOUNDATION, ENDOWED WITH 80,000 EUROS
The sites of Almoloya (Pliego) and La Bastida (Totana), both in the province of Murcia, open the doors to expand the knowledge of the Argar culture through a project that investigates the political and economic inequalities of one of the most significant cultures in the Bronze Age.
The project, led by a team of researchers attached to the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and the Department of Prehistory of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) wins the award after having been a finalist in the other two editions.
The project ‘Almoloya-Bastida: power, gender and kinship in a forgotten civilization of the Bronze Age’, the Argar culture, has a leading role in the knowledge of recent prehistory in Spain, and is considered one of the most relevant cultures of the Bronze Age in Europe. The Argar is not just another archaeological culture. Its main characteristic was the establishment of acute political and economic inequalities, with great patrimonial, cultural and economic relevance.
III National Award of Archaeology and Paleontology Palarq Foundation. The jury has ruled unanimously in favor of this project. This was announced by the spokesman of the Jury, constituted for this third edition, Luis Monreal, during the gala held this Thursday at the National Archaeological Museum (MAN) in Madrid, headquarters of the event since its founding. The gala was presided over by the Minister of Culture and Sport, Miquel Iceta, and was attended by the president of the Palarq Foundation, the award’s organizer, Antonio Gallardo Ballart.
During his speech, the spokesman of the jury wanted to highlight the difficulty for the jury to make the final decision given the high quality and originality of the projects presented. In this sense, Luis Monreal stressed that the winning project meets all the criteria pursued by the award: “the quality of the research, the relevance of the topic, the potential for development, the contribution to fill a gap in knowledge and the ability to disseminate”. In this sense, the spokesperson of the jury highlighted the innovative nature of a project “that aims to unravel immaterial aspects of a millenary civilization that existed in Spain, in an area comparable to the surface of Belgium, and of a culture in which the inequalities and relationships, kinships and the formation of a society that disappeared are unraveled”.
The jury of the third edition of the Award was formed by:
- Luis Monreal, General Manager of the Aga Khan Foundation, Geneva.
- Prof. Tim D. White, Director of the Human Evolution Research Center, University of Berkeley.
- Ms. María de Corral López-Dóriga, independent curator, art critic and art advisor.
- Gregorio Marañón y Bertrán de Lis, jurist, businessman and academic.
- Margarita Orfila, Professor of Archaeology, University of Granada, Spain.
- Pepe Serra, Director of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
- Mr. Jesús García Calero, Director of ABC Cultural.
In his words of welcome, the president of the Palarq Foundation, Antonio Gallardo Ballart, stressed that the winning project “responds to an excellent work of many years that has put in value a very relevant culture of the Bronze Age that was not known, the Argar Culture, within the geographical scope of several provinces, mainly that of Murcia. It is a project of scope: with many years of research in the past, in the present and with many aspects of the Argar Culture that will be discovered and disseminated in the future”.
On behalf of the research team, Cristina Rihuete thanked the award and what it means for the continuity of the project: “basically, the award will allow us to concentrate on basic research and its dissemination”. On the results of the research carried out so far, Dr. Rafael Micó, another of the main researchers of the large team involved in the project, said: “the main results have to do with the increasingly detailed knowledge of the political organization, economic relations and even the kinship rules of a prehistoric community from 4,000 years ago”.
In this sense, Rafael Micó added that “this type of field of study allows us to contribute in a very interesting way to debates of great interest that never go out of fashion, such as the origin of civilizations or the origin of societies with inequalities, the origin of violence and what effects it can have on everyday life”.
In a vindictive speech, the most senior researcher of the team, Vicente Lull, praised the work of the Palarq Foundation, “where teamwork is being valued and this commitment in a context of competition such as the current one is very commendable”. Lull focused his speech on a criticism of the impact reports, which he described as superficial, and the criteria for evaluating their programs in this field.
The entire team received the award from the Minister of Culture and Sport, Miquel Iceta, who praised the work of the Palarq Foundation: “We need experts in the field to discover the richness of our history and private foundations that value and help these projects,” he said, while encouraging professionals to continue researching.
“Researching the little-known remote past may not be economically profitable, but it does have an immense value in terms of getting to know ourselves better. Knowing the past is a good tool to understand the present and to know the relationship between things”, concluded the minister.
Through the project ‘Almoloya-Bastida: power, gender and kinship in a forgotten civilization of the Bronze Age’ the team of researchers attached to the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and the Department of Prehistory of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), develops research on the Argar culture ranging from the strictly archaeological to elements on social evolution and political organization, which give it a unique relevance at European level.
The Argar culture has a leading role in the knowledge of recent prehistory in Spain and is considered one of the most important cultures of the Bronze Age in Europe, whose main characteristic is the establishment of acute political and economic inequalities, to the point of having been described as one of the first states in Europe.
The society of El Argar possessed a level of political and economic complexity structurally comparable to a Civilization. Unlike what is usually assumed for the European communities of the early Bronze Age, 3 very important points become clear: civilization and prehistory are not antithetical terms, the European Bronze Age is not synonymous with “Barbarism” and many of the relationships that today shape or limit us as a society and as individuals have their roots in autochthonous revolutions whose memory had been lost.
