THE GEOMETRIC ART OF THE IBERIAN SCHIST PLAQUES

Cristina Lopes 1 Favors are expensive, friendship is priceless Os favores so caros, a amizade no tem preo 4. A sndrome das placas loucas V. S., Gonalves ABSTRACT The so called Alentejans schist plaques display a very strong personality in terms of graphic language, their geometric art allowed to reevaluate the more usual interpretative approaches, and indicate a distinctive of the identity of the dead. The possible inspiration for the aesthetic style of the schematic plaques and the anthropomorphic character are considered. The rules of the graphic presentation: motives, shapes and different types of drawing. Since the nineteenth century, archaeologist discovered engraved stone plaques in Neolithic graves in southern Portugal and Spain. These plaques about the size of ones palm, usually made of slate, and incised with geometric or more rarely zoomorphic or anthropomorphic design will be addressed in its various components. The geometric art of the Iberian schist plaques can be approached from the iconographic and aesthetic outset terms. The possible relationships between schematic art and the expressed patrons are kept in the memory and identity of Iberian schist plaques.

INTRODUCTION Of the various artifacts we find in megalithic art, the engraved schist plaques are those that immediately present a striking character in the symbolism they contain. It is acknowledged that there was a grammar for decorative engraved schist plaques (Gonalves 2006: 46), which can be segmented into several analyses as synthesis of geometric motifs that allows to establish an identity for these votive artifacts. The plaques have been found especially among the dead buried in Iberian megalithic tombs, like dolmens or tumuli, but also in tholoi, funerary monuments of later date. The material is a piece of schist, cut into varying length, usually between 8 and 25 cm, mainly dark blue (with different nuances) or sometimes green (serpentine). It is generally trapezoidal shape, sometimes roughly triangular or quadrangular, rarely in other format. Its geometric art is quite informative of a phase in which the group developed a social organization and more complex economy as a synthetic geometric art. The angular motifs are rare in the European Paleolithic art which is mostly figurative rather than geometric; these patterns appear, especially from the Neolithic and remain until the end of the Bronze Age. The rock art in Alentejo, occurs mainly on river rocks, and usually rounded motifs predominate. In mobile art, on the contrary, it appears that there is a preference for the
1

Mestranda da Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa; E-mail: clopes99@gmail.com

recurring geometric motifs. In schist plaques, excluding the eye/sun, round shapes are practically absent.

RULES OF GRAPHIC PRESENTATION: DIFFERENT TYPES OF DRAWING

MOTIFS,

SHAPES

AND

The engraved schist plaque are mostly organized in fields, from top to bottom, the first corresponding to a head separated or not, then a body with elements differentiating the individual, crowed or not, and an area that marks the final end or bottom of the plaque.

Fig.1 Standard nomenclature (From Gonalves, 2004) Fig.1, Drawing of an ideal plaque with most components of analysis, and their standard nomenclature. On the left, from the top: the head, separator of head-body, body delimiter of bottom. On the right the perforation for suspension, vertical division head within the head, sidebands, and the dominant motives, the triangles with vertices up in band

This image is filled with geometric motifs that are of different types: 1. triangles; 2. Zigzag lines; 3. Zigzag bands; 4. Squares or rectangles; 5. Vertical or horizontal bands, straight or curved, usually filled.

Some have the outline in order to underline even more clearly the anthropomorphic character. Like the example of Figure 2 and 3.

Fig.2 (From Gonalves, 2004)

Fig.3 - (From Gonalves, 2004) The types of drawing are geometric Fig.4 - (From Gonalves, 2004)

There is a syndrome of crazy plaques, with the body organized by the central, vertical structuring, (fig. 5).

Fig.5 - (From Gonalves, 2004) No absolute chronology is available for the syndrome of crazy plaques. However, if date for large plaque j.8-667, from Herdade de Santa Margarida, Beta-166422: 29202870 Cal BC at 2 sigma (Gonalves), as terminus post quem, the Crazy plaque STAM H.8-3-5 corresponds perhaps to a time compatible with the timing of the deposition funeral Cm-6, which lead us to a period between 2870-2500 BC, then in the second quarter of the third millennium.

INTERPRETATIVE APPROACHES One of the most common theories suggests that the schist plaques of the gravestones found in several burial structures in Iberia (also found in some sites) are representation of the Mother Goddess (Almagro Gorbea 1973; Gonalves, 1999, 2004a, 2006). This theory has had great grip. We can realize that the Goddess is an iconographic representation of the life force, accompanying the dead. In addition, the first half of the third millennium BC was a culmination of the Sun Eye Goddess, common in metal societies of South Iberian Peninsula. These examples of mobiliary art, used in pottery or bone, however in the Alentejo, including the peninsula of Lisbon, south to the Algarve, including the area of Huelva and Badajoz, this symbols of the Goddess emerge in association with the geometric art of the schist plaques. Katina Lillios, after analyzing the data on the manufacture and distribution of the plaques, considers that most of the Iberian plaques are genealogical records of the dead that served as durable markers of identity of the local and regional groups. These records were to legitimize and perpetuate an ideology of social difference, in the late

Neolithic, in what the author calls Heraldry for the Dead. These records were made by recording geometric patterns on stones to secure lines of peninsular clans and identify members of their elites, a system of social communication obviously practised long before the introduction of alphabets. The systematic analysis of graphic codes, held in more than 1.100 plaques, collected in South Iberian megalithic tombs, is published online, the ESPRIT (Engraved Stone Plaques Registry and Inquiry Tool) http://research2.its.uiowa.edu/iberian/. According to Manuel Calado (2010), of paramount importance are the space issues involving in comparing the geographical distribution of the plaques, its core area of origin and the distribution of rock art in Central Alentejo, including the Alqueva Dam Complex. The inspiration of the style of schist plaques may also be associated with fiber arts, in an ethnographic/anthropological approach, as the anthropomorphic character is suggested. At the site of guas Frias, Alandroal, the excavation, led by him, found all stages of production well represented, and establish new perspectives. He advanced the possibility of a single production center, associated with the rock sanctuary of Alqueva, that could fit an interpretation of the plaques as icons including any mother-goddesses, other deities or even ancestors (Draft, 2010) that worked in parallel with the other idols recognized in the Iberian South (Hurtado, 2010). It can be assumed that the designs of the plaques could be decided by customers (based on an established iconographic program) and executed by the artists.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUDING REMARKS On the late Neolithic pottery, mostly smooth, we can see that sometimes geometric motives similar to those of the schist plaques appear. In a later period, the Chalcolithic, the plaques can be considered as one of the inspirations for the symbolic beakers pottery, as well as the ornaments of burnished Final Bronze Age ceramics. Their being the possibility of ethnic markers (Bueno, 2010; Hurtado, 2010), through the representation of iconographic specialized pantheons, is plausible if we considered there specific entities with specific graphic representation in determinate area. That clearly demonstrates the importance of geometric art that has been preserved in the memory and identity of the Iberian schist plaques. The interpretative model advanced by Isabel Lisboa and developed by Katina Lillios, as heraldic type records (Lisboa, 1985; Lillios, 2002, 2003, 2008), is quite systematic and important, but it set apart from the magical-religious approach and the co-relation with other approaches that derive from it. The Portuguese project PLACA NOSTRA coordinated by Professor Victor Gonalves has developed the research of these votive artifacts. It has studied among others the phenomenon of reuse of these artifacts in the megalithic monuments in the region of vora (Gonalves, 2003), with the reuse through cutting and polishing. To make a new recording can be several explanations. The pragmatic one can be the law of

least effort. Or it can be assumed that the symbolism of an original old board could be implemented in a symbolic act again, creating a new magic-religious situation. Another interesting study by this working group, works at syndrome of mad plaques. Found out that everything seems to indicate, that this syndrome is a result of a degenerative structural concept, of the symmetry in the space filling the support. To Professor Emmanuel Anati it could be a kind of churinga, common among the Australian Aborigines. This artifact is of modest dimensions as the schist plaques, is oval and elongated size similar to ones palms, and are engraved on or painted with the signs of ancestral identity. The raw material, wood, bone, horn or stone, comes from the sacred area, where dwell the ancestral spirits, so the object has a pedigree of provenance. According to oral tradition the churinga is part of theirs conceptual framework. The identity of an individual is determined by the churinga. When a woman is pregnant elders define the identity of the child, setting out which ancestor will be the reincarnation, and give it a totemic symbol. This artifact is mainly reserved for male individuals although in central australian desert have been found churinga for ladies. It could be observed that in the history of the engraved schist plaques, there was initially a symmetric geometric representation, in a second phase the syncretic fusion with the iconographic and aesthetic associated with the Goddess of the Eyes of Sun, and in a third the degeneration of the structuring concept as a terminal point of the process. In the current state of knowledge it seems obvious to me that the diversity of graphic solutions, using the same geometric art, evokes questions concerning the social dimension of the subsystem and the magical-religious agency among others. Explanation depends upon the paradigm you follow. For instant, some discuss the advantages that would accrue from aligning archaeological explanation to Marxist theory and in particular the power the Hegelian dialectic can provide. Which NeoDarwinists, prefer the explanatory power of natural selection, while processual and interpretative approaches favour, respectively, science and social theory. If there is an explanation it is that change is somehow inherent in the system. Bibliographi: Almagro Gorbea, M. J. (1973). Los Idolos del Bronce Hispano. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientficas. Anati, E. (1997). I segni della storia, Roma Di Renzo Editore. Anati, E. (1999). Grafismo e semiotica, BCSP n.31-32, Edizioni del Centro, Capo di Ponte. Anati, E. (1999). Definire lidentit, BCSP n.36, Edizioni del Centro, Capo di Ponte. Anati, E. (2002). Lo stile come fattore diagnostico nellarte preistorica. Edizioni del Centro, Capo di Ponte.

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