Una sepultura con armas de baja época ibérica (o época romana republicana) en la necrópolis del «Cerro de las Balas» (Écija, Sevilla)

Abstract

Iberian Iron-Age weapons are extremely rare in western Andalusia, due mainly to the absence of the normative cremation cemeteries typical of other areas in the Peninsula, cemeteries where nearly all of the approximately six thousand Iron Age weapons that we know have been documented. In this paper we present one of the very few exceptions to this rule: a ‘warrior’ burial found in the Iron Age cemetery cemetery at ‘Cerro de las Balas’ (or «bullets’ hill», so known after the many sling projectiles found in the neighbourhood). This is an important find due to three facts: the type of weapons (among them a sword of the gladius hispaniensis type and a dagger of a very late Celtiberian or very early Roman type); the date, between the Late Iberian period and Early Roman rule; and the closed assemblage of weapons: sword, dagger and two javelins or short spears. It is quite possible that the burial is to be dated to the beginning of the second century BC, and therefore that the sword found in it is the earliest known example of the Roman gladius hispaniensis sword... or the latest version of the Iberian prototype for it. Finally, we discuss the proximity of this burial to the caesarian battlefield of Munda (45 BC) to conclude that in all probability these are two completely independent events, the burial being probably much earlier.