Anthropomorphous sculpture from the oppidum of Úbeda la Vieja (Úbeda, Jaén, Spain)

Side view of sculpture fragment. It is a female head that is very eroded and barely perceived well the features that define it. It highlights the headdress of geometric lines on the wavy hair and short split in two, which appears slightly through the forehead. The face is elongated, large eyes and almonds. The site of Úbeda la Vieja is located on the right bank of Guadalquivir, within the municipality of Úbeda, on a spur formed by two hills that rise about 400 meters above sea level. The cultural sequence offered by the stratigraphy of the site, as well as the remains that can be collected in surface, ranges from a final moment of the Copper Age, through the Bronze Age, until Iberian and Roman times, these phases to which most of the material remains belong. At the beginning of the fourth century B.C. in Sierra Mágina, in one of the doors that open to the upper valley of the Guadalquivir River from the highlands of Granada, the prince of the oppidum located in Úbeda la Vieja, raised a monument to a hero (the sanctuary of El Pajarillo). It was built at the point where several streams shaped the river Jandulilla, in a place that in ancient times was lake landscape between holm oaks and pine trees, of which remains in the immediate relief of the mountains of Mágina. The prince of Ubeda la Vieja (Iltiraka for the Iberians or Salaria, the name with which the Romans met the city), wanted with this work to give his hallmarks to the land governed by the river and to be lord of the road that sent to the other princes of Guadalquivir the Athenian dishes among other exotic objects. It should not be forgotten that at that time the need was generated to open ways of communication with the coast to give entry to manufactured products that strengthened the cumulative processes of the aristocracy and the obedience of its clienteles, this may be the case of the river Jandulilla in the Eastern Campiña of Jaén. The prince built the monument on the slope of a hill, next to a lake, to be seen by those who had to access the valley of the river, forced road for those who wanted to reach the valley of Guadalquivir. The monument consisted of a large tower embedded in a fortification that as a stage created the false image of a city. A system of podium and stairs allowed to ascend to the monument and to the warehouses that existed inside the false fortification. On the tower he ordered that the images that narrated the story of the hero be placed. The group has allowed to propose a representation of the narrative discourse that the prince of Ubeda la Vieja wanted to show to those who approached his land. It is not known whether it was himself or any of his ancestors, the case is that a hero was facing a wild beast, a wolf, in the presence of his protective animals, lions and taps, before a young man, lying at the feet of the wolf, who could be the teenager to whom the hero intended to save or even a split of the same hero before performing the rite of passage. Bibliography: Ruiz, A.Rodriguez-Ariza, M.O. (2003): “Landscape and settlement between the Iberians of the Guadalquivir River Basin (S. VI to III a. n. e.),” in Ambiente e paesaggio nella Magna Gracia, Atti del quarantaduesimo convegno di studi sulla Magna Greece: 261-278. Mayoral, V.(2004): Agricultural landscape and social change in Eastern Andalusia between Iberian and Roman periods. Higher Council for Scientific Research. Madrid.