Cronología Absoluta y Periodización de la Prehistoria de las Islas Baleares by RAFAEL MICÓ PEREZ
British Archaeological Reports International Series 1373. 2005. 621 pages, 65 figures, 1 map. ISBN 1 84171 815 7. (£70.00)
The prehistoric monuments of Mallorca and Menorca have long been known to both
local inhabitants and foreign visitors. They form a highly visible
materialisation of the past in the modern landscape, unmissable to all but the
most myopic and over-refreshed of tourists who may not appreciate that Magaluf
and Palma Nova are in a foreign country. Monuments such as talayots, navetas
and taulas have a tradition of antiquarian study that focused
attention on their architectural forms, with fieldwork limited to the emptying
out of their contents or their robbing by more clandestine activities. Similar
practices have also limited the contextual information on collective burials in
natural and artificial caves. For foreign archaeologists, the Balearic Islands
are ‘something else’, island cultures like those of Sardinia, Corsica and Malta
that have distinctive sites, sequences and materials that do not fit into the
standard Three Age system structure of European prehistory. To a certain extent
they have been viewed as curiosities, although the main focus in recent decades
has been on their comparative study with island cultures in the Mediterranean
and beyond, especially in relation to their colonisation and degrees of
isolation from mainland societies at different stages of their prehistory.
A major impetus to the absolute dating of life and death in Balearic prehistory
was given by the late Bill Waldren. Both in his ‘heartland’ of northern
Mallorca, within easy driving distance of his home in Deya, and in Menorca,
Waldren went to work from the 1960s on the contextualisation of both stratified
and unstratified sites and materials, and the systematic use of radiocarbon
dating as part of this study. A significant outcome of this and other
contemporary research was the proposal of a longer absolute chronology for the
occupation of the Balearic islands, extending back to the fifth millennium cal
BC, and a higher chronology for some of the main monument types. Other research
projects, especially those of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona at Son
Fornés and Son Ferragut in central Mallorca and Cova des Carritx and Cova des
Mussol on Menorca have added to the work of dating and contextualisation, as
well as asking questions about the nature of the prehistoric societies that
lived on the Balearic Islands.
Micó’s publication marks an important stage in this tradition of research on
the Balearic Islands during the last five decades. His objectives are twofold:
to provide an inventory of all absolute dates on archaeological sites and
palaeo-environmental samples and to use the evaluation and analysis of these
dates to propose a periodisation of the prehistoric occupation of the islands.
After reviewing the development of absolute and relative chronologies on the
islands, he shows how the use of radiocarbon dating has accelerated from under
100 dates before 1980, to 370 dates by 1998 and 751 dates in 2005. Activity has
been unevenly distributed between the islands, with Mallorca having some
two-thirds of the dates, although there is considerable regional variation and
parts of Menorca have larger numbers of dates per region. In most cases there
are only low frequencies of dates per site, thus showing the importance of key
sites and sequences at Son Matge, Son Mas, Son Ferrandell-Oleza, Cova de Muleta
and Son Fornés in Mallorca and Cova des Carritx and Torralba den Salord on
Menorca. Also of interest are the comparatively high frequencies of dates on
short-lived samples such as human and animal bone, although dates on seeds are
rare.
The lion’s share of this publication, some 501 pages in all, is devoted to the
inventory of dates, organised alphabetically by site and then in chronological
order of the dates for each site, from the oldest to the youngest. The format
adopted for each date is to give the site, location, the date’s calibration at
one- and two-sigma, any carbon and nitrogen ratios, details of the
archaeological context and significance, observations and bibliographic
references. The format enables Micó to present the basic information on each
date and its context, and then to make any observations on what the sample
actually dates, where it fits into the sequence of a site, whether it dates use
or abandonment, and how much confidence we might have in it overall. This is
priceless information. As we have learnt time and time again with radiocarbon
dating, this back to basics approach is fundamental to how we proceed to use
absolute dates to construct absolute chronologies. As such, the inventory alone
is an essential research tool for anyone working on Balearic prehistory.
Having presented the basic evidence, the author proceeds to use it to present a
chronological sequence for the islands from the earliest human colonisation to
the Roman conquest. Quite rightly this comes with a ‘health warning’, stressing
where there are gaps in the evidence and where the nature of the samples leaves
much to be desired. At the same time, there is positive emphasis on the use of
short-lived samples, at least in comparison to long-lived samples wherever
possible. The periodisation proceeds in two stages. First Micó divides up the
sites into structural and functional types and examines the dating spans of
each type using the sums of probabilities of dates at the 1-sigma range: thus
the occupation sites are divided into caves/rock shelters, open-air
settlements, naviforms, talayots, sanctuaries, taulas etc,
while the funerary sites are divided into such types as dolmens, caves, hypogea
(of more than one type) and navetas. Secondly the date ranges of these
site types are then compared with each other to identify any marked breaks in
sequence, with due allowance made for the quality of the evidence and regional
or inter-island variations in that evidence.
The result of this analysis is the definition of eight periods in Balearic
prehistory. The author argues, quite correctly in my mind, that there is no
strong case for any stable human colonisation of the islands before the middle
of the third millennium cal BC. This argument is based partly on the
radiocarbon evidence and partly on the contextual evidence and the absence of
unequivocal cultural materials that indicate any interaction with the West
Mediterranean mainland at this time. The earliest evidence for substantial
populations is associated with Beaker materials and occupies the period c.
2500/2300-2100/2000 cal BC. The sites and materials of the second millennium
cal BC are divided two broad periods (Late Beaker/Dolmen and Naviform), while
the famous talayot monuments are now dated to a period from the
mid-ninth to the late sixth century cal BC, and low chronologies are also
argued for the so-called ‘sanctuaries’ on both islands and the taulas of
Menorca (both in the second half of the first millennium cal BC).
This periodisation develops that proposed in recent publications by Micó and
his colleagues from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. What we see on each
occasion is how the additional radiocarbon dates are strengthening the outlines
of this sequence, as well as highlighting major outcomes and deficiencies in
the quality of the evidence for particular site types. A major observation now
is how the monuments of the islands are in fact restricted to comparatively
short periods of a few centuries each, with the most well known concentrated in
the first millennium cal BC. For example, the talayots (stone towers)
and their associated settlements were erected and used in their primary form
for a matter of perhaps three to four centuries over the entire islands of
Mallorca and Menorca. This has major implications for how we think about these
monuments and what they tell us about the organisation of labour and society at
this time. Their abandonment and destruction, followed by major changes in the
archaeological record in the period from the sixth century onwards, suggests a
period of social change greater than any other in the preceding two millennia
of the islands’ occupation. Here we are looking at social changes occurring at
the island scale.
A second observation is that the period of famous monument construction is now
seen to occupy only about 40% of the period of the islands’ occupation. For the
rest of that time, we need to get to grips with a more low profile
archaeological record. When considered in a wider, west Mediterranean context,
the talayots of Mallorca and Menorca are now shown to be substantially
later in date than the second millennium cal BC stone towers of Sardinia (nuraghi)
and Corsica (torri), with which they have often been argued to be
related.
Radiocarbon dating has been used by archaeologists for over fifty years and the
battles over its validity have long been won. The implications of the ‘second
radiocarbon revolution’, with the calibration of the basic dates, were clearly
grasped some thirty years ago. Radiocarbon dating appears in every textbook on
archaeological method. And yet there are marked differences in the intensity of
its use across time and space in Europe. Every area also requires a kind of
quality assurance testing on the dates and the absolute chronologies that are
used. Micó (and the other members of the research group to which he belongs)
has done just this for the Balearic Islands. The result is a publication which
will be indispensable to anyone studying the prehistoric occupation of these
islands. The book assembles the available information, identifies its strengths
and weaknesses, and proposes a periodisation for further evaluation. As a
result, we can begin to think more deeply about the nature of the societies who
inhabited these islands and identify the critical periods of change in them.
Bob Chapman
University of Reading
Review Submitted: September 2005
The views expressed in
this review are not necessarily those of the Society or the Reviews
Editor.
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