The Age of the Iron

From the eight to the six centuries B.C., the hill of the castle of Lorca was possibly settled, due to its strategic situation, and it received the influences of the colonial commerce, mainly from the Phoenician and Greek.

Other villages next to Lorca were established in the plain or in small hillsides next to the streams. Los Arrieros, El Cañete, Cañada de Alba, Vilerda, Torrealvilla and the Tower of Sancho Manuel in Cazalla are clear examples of this.

The distant regions of the Guadalentín valley were steered from big towns that controlled a great extension of terrain. Some of them were in the upper of a hill as ‘El Cabezo de las Pupas’ in Morata looking down on the valley of the Amir river, and others, dominating the High Territories of Lorca valley of Coy, Avilés and Doña Inés , and ‘la Tejerica’, that survived during the Iberian period.

In the environs of the ‘Corneros’ river there have been documented a few small towns such as ‘La Parroquia’ or el Churtal, established in the sides of the river and possibly related with the commerce that generated the natural road of communication between Levante and Andalusia Oriental. In these sites a great quantity of excerpts of receptacles of storage, mainly amphoras, has appeared.

These people used the rite of the incineration to bury their deceased. The unique ruins of necropolis of this time have been documented opposite the town of Torrealvilla, in which it has been found an urn of incineration with spotted decoration.