Iberian Lorca
The Iberian culture is developed from
the six to the first century B.C.
The typical establishment was the fortified
town on hills, easily defensible
and next to the courses of water. In the
fifth century B.C. an important Iberian
town, hardly walled, raised
in the current hill of the castle
and in the side of the saw ‘Caño’.
It practiced a control and domination of
the surrounding territory and it kept international
trades with the Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian
merchants. It was simultaneously the centre
of market towards the remainder of towns
of the region. This town was completed with
an extensive settled area near the right
margin of the river.
Other small towns were
established in the high course of
the Guadalentín River. They
are in Peña María, El Cimbre,
Los Alagüeces in Zarzadilla de Totana,
El Coto de los Tiemblos in Barranco Hondo,
Los Arrieros and La Torre de Sancho Manuel
in Cazalla. They show an economy based fundamentally
in the cultivation of cereals such as wheat,
barley and hundredth, the grapevine, the
olive trees, an incipient vegetable orchard,
fruits and a cattle of sheep and goats.
The small regions of the valley of the
Guadalentín, with important natural
resources, depended of towns of a minor
entity than Lorca, as occurs in Coy, Avilés
and Doña Inés. There, a town
in the Tejerica in Doña Inés
not only existed, but also a necropolis
in the Fuentecica del Tío Garrulo
in Coy and a sanctuary in the neighbouring
village of Cerro Pelado in Coy. All of this
constitutes the typical
Iberian nucleus shaped for the town, the
necropolis and the sanctuary.
The houses had a square or rectangular
plant, separated for tight streets, and
they used to have several rooms. They did
not possessed temples, but sacred places
such as sanctuaries, in which appear ex
voto as offering to the gods. The rituals
were carried out outdoors or in caves.
The Lorca Iberian necropolis
was southwards of the population, outside
of the wall, but in its environs. The
ritual was very complex: they incinerated
the corpse in the ‘ustrinum’
or flees funeral, and after, they placed
the ashes or mortal remains in a ceramic
urn with lid that they placed in a hole
or ‘loculum’. They also placed
the funeral trousseau,
that is the personal objects and sometimes
elements of the work which that person developed
in his lifetime. The niche is covered of
stones, a quadrangular tumulus or a pillar-wake.
*Ex-voto. Tributes or
offerings, such as figures made of wax or
bronze, hairs, terra cottas or small boards,
that the faithfuls dedicate to their god.
