Aesthetics and identity: prestigious iberian vessels in the foundational tombs of the Guadiana Minor (second half of the V century BC)

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the patterns of regularity, the stylistic changes and the social significance of the Iberian vascular iconography. We focus our attention on the foundational tombs of the Iberian necropolises of the Guadiana Menor basin. Our results show how the appropriation of different iconographic patterns from part of the aristocracies, generated uniques discourses for the collective imagination. We show how at the end of the 5th century BC, the mechanisms of aristocratic legitimation were characterized by a multivariate language in which symbolic codes are present in orientalizing and Attic pottery supports but, also, converge with new symbolic codes displayed in Iberian potteries. Thus, Iberian pottery in foundational tombs is characterized by the repainting of the pottery surface, and show a variability of mythemes that, due to exogenous influence or local innovation, generate a complex iconography at the service of the aristocratic codes of prestige and social representation.