Western Mediterranean
Bronze Age cultures
Metalworking improved and promoted the progress of the western Mediterranean lands, which developed maritime relations that joined them to one another and bound them to the eastern Mediterranean. Several great centres displayed considerable architectural activity, of which some splendid evidence remains.
Iberia
The Bronze Age was a brilliant stage of culture in the Iberian Peninsula; the culture that developed in the Almería region was designated El Argar, honouring the name of a great site of southeastern Spain. This culture, which stood well fortified on a plateau about 1,000 feet (300 metres) long and about 330 feet (100 metres) wide, enjoyed, from 1700 bce, several centuries of prosperity and exerted an influence that spread over the eastern coasts of Spain and over southern Portugal. A necropolis of about 1,000 burials has yielded goods of quality from the graves. The El Argar culture had continuing contacts with the Balearic Islands, Malta, and Sardinia.
Balearic Islands
In the Balearic Islands the Bronze Age corresponds to the 2nd millennium bce and is designated “talayotic”—from the name of the talayot, a megalithic monument in the form of a round or quadrangular tower. Majorca still has about 1,000 talayots, and Minorca has more than 300. These high numbers indicate the amplitude of construction activity during this period, implying precise architectural planning and the coordination of the efforts of human groups. The talayots’ intended purpose varies: they may be defensive towers, places of worship, or funerary monuments. There are also other types of megalithic monuments in the Balearic Islands; examples include the naveta, or collective tomb built in the form of a ship, and the Minorcan taula, a monolithic column topped by a slab and recognized today as a support for a place of worship. This megalithic architecture, which was imposing in conception and skilled in execution, continued into the 1st millennium bce, the early Iron Age, and made the Balearic Islands an exceptional ground for the study of the structures of the pre-Roman era.
Malta
In Malta a magnificent flourishing of underground burial chambers, or hypogea, and megalithic temples occurred in the Neolithic Period. These Neolithic temples are among the first instances in Europe of buildings erected for a particular functional purpose. They have a trefoil plan and a roof construction of corbelled stone that is the earliest-known example of its kind. The arrival of Cycladic and Cretan influences in Malta stimulated the birth of a stone and terra-cotta statuary representing the deities and their worshipers. This continued brilliantly in the Copper Age, but the beginning of the 2nd millennium witnessed the appearance of a new people who conquered and destroyed; evidence of this destruction is the cremation burial ground of Tarxien. Small terra-cotta female idols there recall contemporary figurines of Cyprus; however, the culture became rapidly impoverished.
Sardinia and Corsica
It is necessary to go farther north—Sardinia and Corsica—to find an original and prosperous Bronze Age, the creations of which continue to pose certain problems of interpretation. The Sardinian bronze civilization is characterized by the nuraghi, round towers that may occur alone or form the centre of complex fortified arrangements. About 7,000 of them, dating from about 1500 to 1100 bce, have been discovered on different parts of the island. They are efficiently and skillfully constructed defensive fortresses, the interior arrangements of which give evidence of an art developed out of military architecture. Around the nuraghi press the round huts of villagers, which are, in turn, surrounded by solid ramparts. The complex thus constitutes an architectural unity, which arose from a patriarchal society in which families fearfully gathered around their clan chief. There is a kind of rough beauty in these fortified castles, with their compact and severe appearance. Tribal battles and the Phoenician conquest in the 7th century bce led to the decline and disappearance of the nuraghic civilization.
On neighbouring Corsica, fine megalithic structures, such as dolmens and isolated or grouped menhirs, were made during the Neolithic Period. This megalithic architecture continued in the Copper Age and throughout the Bronze Age. Populated centres were provided with a fortified arrangement; Filitosa, for example, had an elliptical surrounding wall, menhir statuary erected in a place of worship, and defensive towers.
Italy
From 1500 bce in Emilia, in northern Italy south of the Po River, the Terramare culture developed. This culture was characterized by a curious world of terramare, habitations built on pilings and protected by a vallum, or defensive wall, which screened them from floods (in the flat countryside, seasonal rains were violent). The name given to these habitations—singular terramara—comes from the word terra-marna (“rich land”) in the dialect of Emilia and refers to the considerable archaeological deposit that these dwellings left behind. The Terramare culture lasted until the early Iron Age. The society was peasant, and, once again, its art was limited to the construction of dwellings and to the production and ornamentation of weapons and vases.
Iron Age cultures
Iberia
Highly interesting artistic flowerings occurred in Spain at the end of the protohistoric era. First, in the southwest of the peninsula, near the town of Cádiz, there developed at the extreme end of the 2nd millennium bce a civilization, still poorly understood, that is attributed to the semi-historic, semilegendary state of Tartessus. Archaeology has not yet revealed evidence of the splendour ascribed by the ancients to the Tartessian culture, which was strongly influenced by early Phoenician commercial contacts from the southern coast of Spain. Along the coasts of the Levant and penetrating deeply into the interior of the peninsula, an indigenous population, the Iberians, developed a truly original art under combined Grecian, Carthaginian, and Phoenician influences.
Many Iberian dwelling sites have been discovered on the eastern coasts of Spain, where they were established on high places such as steep-sloped plateaus and protected by surrounding walls with round and square towers and doors. Their street networks did not seem to follow a regular plan. Great temples such as those of Castellar de Santisteban and Despeñaperros in the Sierra Morena have sacred storerooms where a great number (about 6,000 for the two sites) of votive statuettes have been discovered.
Italy
The fate and art of the Etruscan people—who made their appearance in the heart of Italy between the Arno and Tiber rivers about 700 bce and vanished, under the legions’ blows, in the last centuries of the Roman Republic—must be mentioned here because in the early years of their existence they were deeply involved in Italic protohistory. In antiquity the Etruscans were regarded as skillful architects and excellent builders. Precise ritual rules of town planning made it possible for them to construct cities on regular plans, the most beautiful remains of which are those of Marzabotto, near Bologna, and of Capua, in Campania. Nothing much remains of the Tuscan cities, which were, nevertheless, very splendid. On the other hand, there remain thousands of tombs that reveal the structure of the vanished houses. The tomb was the dwelling of the dead and simulated the appearance of one or several rooms, constructed in bedrock and built of stone. Thus well protected, Etruscan grave goods and artistic creations were preserved.
Raymond Bloch David John WatkinWhat little remains of Etruscan stonework has survived by virtue of its massiveness. Foundations of city walls survive at Volterra, Volsinii, and Cortona, but those of Perugia are more complete and have surviving vaulted gates. The tombs, themselves replicas of house interiors, show something of moldings, arches, and vaults. True vaulting and arching were known, and these enabled buildings larger than those of Greece to be constructed. Wood was the chief building material for domestic purposes and for temples, but only the terra-cotta decorations survive. Blocks of houses in carefully paved streets are known only from Marzabotto, although the layout of the tombs with paved streets in the Banditaccia at Caere and the Cuccumella at Vetulonia makes them veritable cities of the dead. The Latian hut urns show that houses of the Villanovan period (8th century bce) were circular in plan with conical roofs, but a stone urn from Clusium is modeled in the form of a rectangular Etruscan house erected on a tall, stepped platform. The roof is a hipped gable and has a gabled gallery over it. In this connection it is interesting that the Romans attributed to the Etruscans the construction of the atrium house. Temples were rectangular in plan and divided into three cellae (chambers); ground plans and nothing more are known from Rome and Bolsena. Etruscan temples, such as those of which remains survive at Bolsena and Orvieto, were built of wood and brick upon high platforms of dressed stone and were consequently more perishable than their Greek equivalents. They were crowned and decorated by brightly painted statues and revetments of terra-cotta, many of which have survived.
William Culican David John Watkin