The Outstanding Biographies of Prehistoric Monuments in Iron Age, Roman, and Medieval Spain

Over the last decade, new questions have emerged with regard to the complex temporal patterns often seen in Iberian prehistoric monuments. A number of megalithic chamber tombs, menhirs, stelae or rock-art panels have been found to show that, as occurs in other European regions, their lives were not restricted to the period of time in which they were built or manufactured, but, on the contrary, they extended well into later (or even much later) prehistoric, protohistoric and subsequent historical periods. Evidence for this includes successive physical transformations through the incorporation of new architectural or graphic elements and/or through the reorganization of previously existing ones, the accumulation of mnemonic artefacts, as well as layouts and orientations in special landscape settings (Díaz-Guardamino 2006; 2008; 2010; 2012; 2015; García Sanjuán et al. 2008; Lillios 2008; García Sanjuán and Wheatley 2010; García Sanjuán 2011; Aranda Jiménez 2013). In this chapter we attempt to show that some prehistoric monuments built or made in the Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age played active roles in the social life of communities considered ‘protohistoric’ or ‘historic’. To achieve this, we first examine a series of monuments with ‘outstanding biographies’, which document single reuse or repeated and/or persistent use during the Iron Age, Antiquity and/or the Middle Age. We will then try to establish some conclusions in relation to the social practices that may have led to such uses or reuses of prehistoric monuments that were thousands of years old by the time they were reinterpreted, rediscovered or reinvented. Although this is a subject that has only been seriously researched over the last decade, the list of Iberian megalithic chamber tombs used in the Iron Age, in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages is now quite substantial (e.g. Caamaño Gesto and Criado Boado 1992; Lorrio Alvarado and Montero Ruiz 2004; García Sanjuán 2005a; 2005b; García Sanjuán et al. 2008; Álvarez Vidaurre 2011). There is varied evidence supporting these cases of reuse.