El Argar

English

Etymology

Borrowing from Spanish El Argar. This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.

Proper noun

El Argar

1. (archaeology) An archaeological site and the prehistoric centre of an early to middle Bronze Age culture, located near present-day Antas, in the province of Almería, Spain.
   • 1975, I. E. S. Edwards, C. J. Gadd, N. G. L. Hammond, E. Sollberger, editors, The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume II, Part 2: History of the Middle East and the Aegean Region c. 1380-1000 BC, 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, page 764:

     From its centre the El Argar culture spread eastwards towards Granada and northwards to Murcia and Valencia, though losing some traits on the way.

   • 1998, Harry Mountain, The Celtic Encyclopedia, Volume 1, Universal Publishers, page 44:

     The site of El Argar sat on a plateau 1000 x 330 ft (300x90 m) on the Rio Antas in southeastern Spain, 7 mi (12 km) from the sea. […] El Argar was the largest and most important of some forty other fortified villages that were within a 50 mi (75 km) length along the coast.

   • 2021, Mireia Celma Martínez, “Long-term effects of forest exploitation in the southeastern Iberian Peninsula: An anthracological synthesis for El Argar (2200-1550 cal BC)”, in Marian Berihuete-Azorín, María Martín Seijo, Oriol López-Bultó, Raquel Piqué, editors, The Missing Woodland Resources, Barkhuis Publishing, page 85:

     The palynological interpretations of the overexploitation and forest degradation of El Argar have been taken from archaeological and bioarchaeological research in the 1980s and 1990s, which in turn have served as the basis for a large number of anthracological studies in the early 20th^[sic] century.

2. (by extension) Argaric culture, the Bronze Age culture of which said archaeological site is the type site; the people of the Argaric culture.
   • 2011, Gavin Menzies, The Lost Empire of Atlantis, Hachette (Swordfish), unnumbered page,

     Then, in turn, a mysterious new people, the El Argar, quite suddenly took over from the Millares.

   • 2013, Vincente Lull, Rafael Micó, Cristina Rihuete Herrada, Roberto Risch, “Chapter 33: Bronze Age Iberia”, in Harry Fokkens, Anthony Harding, editors, The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age, Oxford University Press, page 603:

     El Argar is remarkable not only because of the rapid establishment of a new model of habitat and burial that broke with the Copper Age tradition, but also because of a combination of easily recognizable social practices and material features that were present for almost seven hundred years.

   • 2021, Roberto Risch, Harald Meller, Selina Delgado-Raack, Torsten Schunke, “6: The Bornhöck Burial Mound and the Political Economy of an Únĕtice Ruler”, in Stefanos Gimatzidis, Reinhard Jung, editors, The Critique of Archaeological Economy, Springer Nature, page 105:

     Although, a profound change has also been observed at the beginning of the El Argar Early Bronze Age in south-eastern Spain, around 2200 BCE, which saw the introduction of narrow concave/convex grinding tools operated with wooden grinders, no trough-shaped grinding slabs are known from El Argar sites (Delgado-Raack & Risch, 2015).

Translations

archaeological site

Bronze Age culture or people

Further reading

• Argaric culture on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Los Millares on Wikipedia.Wikipedia