Marking Your Place: Exploring the symbolic communication of identity in the Castro Culture of north-western Portugal during the Bronze and Iron Ages

Summary

How did the people of the Castro Culture of north-western Iberia use symbols to convey meaning and identity during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages? The repeated inscription of symbolic motifs on a variety of material mediums suggests that the role of symbols was more than merely decorative for the Castro people, and the literature is curiously silent regarding the social implications of these motifs. In this paper I will present the results of this research, and argue that the people of the Castro Culture utilized repetitive and recognizable symbolic motifs to assert facets of their identities by inscribing the everyday materials of their lives with symbols that communicated to themselves and others who they were, and their place in the world. The research is based on a newly developed motif typology and database recording the context, frequency, association and presence/absence of each motif as it appears in the ceramic collections from six Castro sites. I have also surveyed museum collections and the published literature for instances of motifs appearing on domestic and communal architecture, and on items of personal adornment.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage