The Woman of La Almoloya

Abstract

Whilst not especially well known in Anglophone culture,1 the Early-Middle Bronze Age Spanish Argaric culture has long been regarded as important, sometimes even ‘the most important Bronze Age culture in Western Europe’, on a par with the better known Aegean cultures such as the Minoans, who were busy on Crete at the same time.2 Discovered in Victorian times by the Belgian Siret brothers, Louis and Henri, and named for the site at El Argar (in Antas, Almeria), the culture has perhaps suffered from the lack of a classical connection – unlike the Minoans and Mycenaeans there is no hint of them in later sources. Developing from around 2200 bc, the Argaric culture came to comprise several state-level polities that collapsed c. 1550 bc; this ending might have been welcomed by many, as Argaric society is thought to have been quite hierarchical and extractive, and the socio-political system it developed gladly and totally forgotten.3