Montilla

Hortala, M., et al. "The funerary "treasure" of Montilla, Cordova, Spain" in Metals of power – Early gold and silver, 6th Archaeological Conference of Central Germany Oct. 17–19, 2013.

Available online: https://www.academia.edu/11419247/The_funeray_treasure_of_Montilla_Cordova_spain?auto=download

Summary

At the beginning of the 20th century a new prehistoric grave was found during agricultural works in Montilla, Cordova, Spain. The metal grave goods (known as the "Montilla's treasure") were bought by a jeweler who sold them to the present Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya in Barcelona.It seems that originally the grave only contained one inhumation, but there are few data on the structure. The grave goods recovered were one gold diadem, two gold arm-rings, a copper tanged dagger, and four arrowheads of the Palmela type. Some pottery fragments were also mentioned but not described.The dating of the burial has been established based on typological criteria, as the copper tanged dagger and the Palmela points agree with a Late Chalcolithic or Early Bronze  Age attribution. However, if we are dealing with a single grave, then an Early Bronze Age date (from the last quarter of the 3rd  millennium BC) seems the more likely option.We present the first detailed study of this set of metal objects combining their typological description with new  X-ray fluorescence (XRF) composition analyses of the gold and copper items. Although previous analyses of copper and gold objects were published separately by the SAM-project ("Studien zu den Anfängen der Metallurgie"), this is the first time that full comprehensive information of the hoard is

Pamela Points

The average length of Palmela points from the Iberian Peninsula is 9.2 cm (Montero/Teneishvili 1996, 82), thus the Montilla's points represent some of the largest examples of this object type. The main feature of these objects is their rhomboidal shape and a very narrow peduncule. Whether the larger and heavier Palmela points were used as arrowheads or as javelins is an ongoing debate, although recently research was able to prove that they could have been used as arrowheads if their weight did not exceed 22g (Gutiérrez et al. 2010). Only one of our objects (inv. no. 14042) which weight is 21.5 g could thus be strictly included in this group, while the rest are heavier (inv. no. 14044 with 24.5 g, inv. no. 14041  with 31.5 g, and inv. no. 14043 with 32.8 g).