Heraldry for the Dead: Memory, Identity, and the Engraved Stone Plaques of Neolithic Iberia

Katina T. Lillios

Published by University of Texas Press 2008

Heraldry for the Dead

Memory, Identity, and the Engraved Stone Plaques of Neolithic Iberia

Katina T. Lillios

https://doi.org/10.7560/718227

Overview
Contents

About this book

In the late 1800s, archaeologists began discovering engraved stone plaques in Neolithic (3500-2500 BC) graves in southern Portugal and Spain. About the size of one's palm, usually made of slate, and incised with geometric or, more rarely, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic designs, these plaques have mystified generations of researchers. What do their symbols signify? How were the plaques produced? Were they worn during an individual's lifetime, or only made at the time of their death? Why, indeed, were the plaques made at all?

Employing an eclectic range of theoretical and methodological lenses, Katina Lillios surveys all that is currently known about the Iberian engraved stone plaques and advances her own carefully considered hypotheses about their manufacture and meanings. After analyzing data on the plaques' workmanship and distribution, she builds a convincing case that the majority of the Iberian plaques were genealogical records of the dead that served as durable markers of regional and local group identities. Such records, she argues, would have contributed toward legitimating and perpetuating an ideology of inherited social difference in the Iberian Late Neolithic.

Author / Editor information

Katina T. Lillios is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iowa.

Reviews

This is a fabulous book! Beautifully written, effectively organized, and richly illustrated. Once I started reading it, I was hooked. . . . This book actually has the potential to be one of the truly seminal studies in archaeology and anthropology (this is something I do not say lightly). It is one of those original studies that only appear rarely in a generation of scholarship.

— John K. Papadopoulos

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Themes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
2. Variations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
3. Biographies Alexander P. Woods Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	76
4. Agency and ambiguity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
5. An Iberian writing system Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
6. memory and identity in neolithic Iberia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Illustration credits Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 232

eBook

Published: January 1, 2010
ISBN: 9780292794184