After crossing a gravel road surrounded by arid plains, I finally arrived at the archaeological site of Cancho Roano. Standing here in the Guadiana Valley in the Extremadura region of southwestern Spain, I imagined how different this dusty, barren plain would have looked 2,500 years ago when it was a hub of trade and worship for Tartessos, a mysterious Iberian society that flourished between the 9th and 5th centuries BCE – then abruptly disappeared.
Now, however, the culmination of ongoing research and new technologies are revealing more about this lost civilization and the role it played in the history of Iberia.
For millennia, Tartessos has been mentioned in Greek and Roman texts, but due to conflicting descriptions – and, for a long time, a lack of conclusive archaeological evidence – it has not been easy for modern historians and archaeologists to determine what Tartessos itself was – a city, a kingdom, a river?
Herodotus, the 5th century BCE Greek historian, wrote of a port city beyond the Pillars of Hercules (modern Strait of Gibraltar), leading some scholars to believe that Tartessos was a body of water and others to think it was a port (probably located around present-day Huelva on the southern coast of Spain). There were even theories, inspired by the writings of Aristotle, that Tartessos was the mythical Atlantis, although this has been widely dismissed in the scientific community.
Tartessos is now generally considered to be a civilization formed from a mixture of natives and Greek and Phoenician colonizers in the Iberian Peninsula. And it was rich too, thanks to rich metal resources and a thriving trade economy. Early discoveries had led historians to believe that civilization was concentrated around the Guadalquivir Valley in Andalusia, but three more recent discoveries in the Guadiana Valley – further west near the Spain-Portugal border – caused archaeologists to rethink the extent of Tartessos. In total, more than 20 Tartessos sites have been identified across Spain, and three have been excavated in the Guadiana river valley in the Extremadura region: Cancho Roano, Casas de Turuñuelo and La Mata.