Megalithic & Tartessian
The Andévalo's Copper-Age fortified villages and dolmens; Tartessos and the Phoenician/Greek silver trade that first put Huelva on the Mediterranean map.
Part of Andévalo
6 moments in this segment.
- — Dolmen de La Zarcita. The Megalithic dolmen of La Zarcita, in the hills above modern Santa Bárbara de Casa. Excavations reveal a fortified village around a central plaza, with an outlying cluster of huts — the defensive-with-suburbs pattern found across the Copper Age Andévalo.
- — Copper-Age Andévalo. The pyrite-and-copper belt between the Sierra de Aracena and the Guadiana sustains a dense network of fortified Copper-Age settlements. The mineral veins that will later feed Tartessos and Rome are already being worked at small scale.
- — Tartessos — the silver kingdom. The semi-legendary kingdom of Tartessos centres on the Huelva-Cádiz coast and trades silver, gold, and tin with Phoenician merchants. The Andévalo's mines are part of the production base; finds from Huelva's necropolis show Phoenician, Greek, and Cypriot imports.
- — Phoenician traders at Huelva. Phoenicians from Tyre and Sidon establish trading posts along the Huelva ría. Iberian metal flows east in exchange for Mediterranean luxury goods; the urban centre that will become the city of Huelva emerges from these contacts.
- — La Joya necropolis (Huelva). The La Joya necropolis at Huelva contains princely burials with Phoenician and Etruscan grave goods — including the celebrated bronze jug now in the Museo Provincial de Huelva. Direct evidence of the Tartessian elite who lived off the Andévalo's mines.
- — Rome takes the Iberian peninsula. At the end of the Second Punic War (206 BC), Rome dislodges Carthage from Iberia. The Andévalo's mineral district becomes imperial Roman property; Riotinto and Tharsis enter centuries of industrial-scale exploitation under state-licensed contractors.
