Editing Tartessos (section)

=== Metallurgy ===
Alluvial tin was panned in Tartessian streams from an early date. The spread of a [[silver standard]] in [[Assyria]] increased its attractiveness (the tribute from Phoenician cities was assessed in silver). The invention of coinage in the seventh century BC spurred the search for bronze and silver as well. Henceforth trade connections, formerly largely in elite goods, assumed an increasingly broad economic role. By the Late Bronze Age, silver extraction in [[Huelva (province)|Huelva Province]] reached industrial proportions. Pre-Roman silver [[slag]] is found in the Tartessian cities of Huelva Province. Cypriot and Phoenician metalworkers produced 15 million tons of pyrometallurgical residues at the vast dumps of Riotinto. Mining and smelting preceded the arrival, from the eighth century BC onward, of Phoenicians <ref>Phoenician coastal settlements and necropoli are typically located at the mouth of rivers, on the first hill behind the delta, at [[Cadiz]], [[Málaga]], [[Granada]], and [[Almeria]].</ref> and then Greeks, who provided a stimulating wider market and whose influence sparked an "orientalizing" phase in Tartessian material culture ({{circa|750–550}} BC) before Tartessian culture was superseded by the [[Classic Iberian culture]].

"Tartessic" artefacts linked with the Tartessos culture have been found, and many archaeologists now associate the "lost" city with [[Huelva]]. In excavations on spatially restricted sites in the center of modern Huelva, sherds of elite painted Greek ceramics of the first half of the sixth century BC have been recovered. Huelva contains the largest accumulation of imported elite goods and must have been an important Tartessian center. [[Medellín (Spain)|Medellín]], on the Guadiana River, revealed an important necropolis.

[[File:Bronce Carriazo, Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla.jpg|thumb|[[:es:Bronce Carriazo|''Bronce Carriazo'']] (625-525 BC), found near Seville]]
Elements specific to Tartessian culture are the Late Bronze Age fully evolved pattern-burnished wares and geometrically banded and patterns "Carambolo" wares, from the ninth to the sixth centuries BC; an "Early Orientalizing" phase with the first eastern Mediterranean imports, beginning circa 750 BC; a "Late Orientalizing" phase with the finest bronze casting and goldsmith work; gray ware turned on the fast [[potter's wheel]], local imitations of imported Phoenician red-slip wares.

Characteristic Tartessian bronzes include pear-shaped jugs, often associated in burials, with shallow dish-shaped braziers having loop handles, incense-burners with floral motifs, [[Fibula (brooch)|fibulas]], both elbowed and double-spring types, and belt buckles.

No pre-colonial necropolis sites have been identified. The change from a late Bronze Age pattern of circular or oval huts scattered on a village site to rectangular houses with dry-stone foundations and plastered [[wattle and daub]] walls took place during the seventh and sixth centuries BC, in settlements with planned layouts that succeeded one another on the same site. 

At [[Castulo|Cástulo]] ([[Jaén, Spain|Jaén]]), a [[mosaic]] of river pebbles from the end of the sixth century BC is the earliest mosaic in Western Europe.{{citation needed|date=January 2023}} Most sites were inexplicably abandoned in the fifth century BC.

Tartessic occupation sites of the Late [[Bronze Age]] that were not particularly complex: "a domestic mode of production seems to have predominated" is one mainstream assessment.<ref>Wagner, in Alvar and Blásquez 1991:104.</ref> An earlier generation of archaeologists and historians took a [[normative]] approach to the primitive Tartessian adoption of [[Punics|Punic]] styles and techniques, as of a less-developed culture adopting better, more highly evolved cultural traits, and finding Eastern parallels for Early Iron Age material culture in the Tartessian sites. A later generation has been more concerned with the ''process'' through which local institutions evolved.<ref>Essays from both points of view are found in Alvar and Blázquez, according to the review by Antonio Gilman in ''American Journal of Archaeology'' '''98'''.2 (April 1994), pp. 369-370.</ref>

[[File:Candelabros de Lebrija (M.A.N. conjunto 236) 01.jpg|thumb|upright|''Candelabra of Lebrija'', found in [[Lebrija]]]]
The emergence of new archaeological finds in the city of Huelva is prompting the revision of these traditional views. Just in two adjacent lots adding up to 2,150&nbsp;sq.&nbsp;m. between [[Las Monjas Square]] and [[Mendez Nuñez Street]], some 90,000 ceramic fragments of indigenous, Phoenician, and Greek imported wares were exhumed, out of which 8,009 allowed scope for a type identification. This pottery, dated from the tenth to the early eighth centuries BC predates finds from other Phoenician colonies; together with remnants of numerous activities, the Huelva discoveries reveal a substantial industrial and commercial ''[[Emporium (antiquity)|emporion]]'' on this site lasting several centuries. Similar finds in other parts of the city make it possible to estimate the protohistoric habitat of Huelva at some 20 hectares, large for a site in the [[Iberian Peninsula]] during that period.<ref>Detailed description and analysis of the objects found and sources mentioned above are surveyed in Fernando González de Canales Cerisola, ''Del Occidente Mítico Griego a Tarsis-Tarteso –Fuentes escritas y documentación arqueológica'' (2004) and F. González de Canales, L. Serrano and J. Llompart, ''El Emporio Fenicio-Precolonial de Huelva, ca. 900-770 a.C.'' (2004).</ref>

Calibrated [[carbon-14 dating]] carried out by [[University of Groningen]] on associated cattle bones as well as dating based on ceramic samples permit a chronology of several centuries through the state of the art of craft and industry since the tenth century BC, as follows: pottery (bowls, plates, craters, vases, amphorae, etc.), melting pots, casting nozzles, weights, finely worked pieces of wood, ship parts, bovid skulls, pendants, fibulae, anklebones, agate, ivory –with the only workshop of the period so far proven in the west-, gold, silver, etc.

The existence of foreign produce and materials together with local ones suggests that the old Huelva harbor was a major hub for the reception, manufacturing, and shipping of diverse products of different and distant origin. The analysis of written sources and the products exhumed, including inscriptions and thousands of [[Greek ceramics]], some of which are works of excellent quality by known potters and painters, has led some scholars to suggest that this habitat can be identified not only with [[Tarshish]] mentioned in the Bible, in the [[Assyria]]n stele of [[Esarhaddon]], and perhaps in the Phoenician inscription of the [[Nora Stone]], but also with the ''Tartessos'' of Greek sources –interpreting the Tartessus river as equivalent to the present-day [[Rio Tinto (river)|Tinto River]] and the [[Guadalquivir Marshes|Ligustine Lake]] to the joint estuary of the [[Odiel]] and Tinto rivers flowing west and east of the Huelva Peninsula.<ref>(es) Gonzalez de Canales Cerisola, F. ''Del Occidente Mítico Griego a Tarsis-Tarteso –Fuentes escritas y documentación arqueológica'', Madrid, Biblioteca Nueva, 2004</ref><ref>(es) Gonzalez de Canales, F.; J. Llompart and L. Serrano. ''El Emporio Fenicio-Precolonial de Huelva, ca. 900-770 a.C.''. Madrid, Biblioteca Nueva, 2004</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Gonzalez de Canales Cerisola|first1=F.|title=Tarshish-Tartessos, the Emporium Reached by Kolaios of Samos|journal=Cahiers de l'Institut du Proche-Orient Ancien du Collège de France (CIPOA) II.|date=2014|url=https://www.academia.edu/8551491|access-date=29 February 2016}}</ref>