Los Millares

Important Chalcolithic settlement and cemetery in Almeria, southeast Spain, of c 2400 BC and located on a spur between the River Andarax and a stream. Within the settlement are circular houses, outside there are forts, megalithic walls, and a cemetery with 80+ passage graves (circular tholos type). The rich grave goods included bone idol figurines, copper axes and daggers, pottery with double-eye motifs, and ivory and ostrich-eggshell artifacts. The site typifies Millaran culture of mid-3rd millennium BC in southern Spain and Portugal with the emergence of ranked societies whose power may have been based on the control of water supplies and sources of metal ores.

A defended settlement site in Almeria, southeast Spain, which has given its name to the local Copper Age culture of the 3rd millennium be. Excavations at the turn of the century demonstrated that the site was defended by a stone wall with semicircular bastions, enclosing approximately five hectares, while recent work suggests that there are further defensive walls inside the enclosure, as in the contemporary Portugese sites of Vila Nova de SAo Pedro and Zambujal. At Los Millares four small outlying forts also exist and an extra-mural cemetery of more than 80 passage graves. Grave goods, found with collective burials in the tombs, include pottery, copper tools and weapons, stone tools and a variety of so-called idols, made of stone, bone or pottery; objects of ivory and ostrich-eggshell, imported from Africa, also occur. Beaker pottery occurs in some of the later tombs and in a second phase of occupation of the settlement. At one time it was customary to interpret Los Millares and similar settlements as colonies from the Aegean. Now most authorities believe the developments represented at Los Millares to have occurred locally. They are thought to indicate the emergence of ranked societies, with élites whose power may have been based on the control of water supplies (perhaps used for irrigation in this extremely arid zone) and sources of metal ores.