Los descubrimientos de Las Capellanías (Cañaveral de León, Huelva): Avances decisivos en la investigación de las Estelas Ibéricas

Conferencia de Leonardo García Sanjuán (Universidad de Sevilla), Marta Díaz-Guardamino (Universidad de Durham), Timoteo Rivera Jiménez (Universidad de Sevilla) y David Wheatley (Universidad de Southampton)

• Presenta: Eduardo Galán (Departamento de Prehistoria, MAN)

The investigations carried out at the Las Capellanías site (Cañaveral de León, Huelva) in 2022 and 2023 have provided novel evidence of decisive value to understand the phenomenon of Iberian prehistoric stelae. On the one hand, with the data obtained in this necropolis, the debate of whether the stelae were funerary markers or road landmarks is definitively settled: they were both things at the same time. The three stelae discovered in Las Capellanías (the first by chance, the other two during the course of the excavations) demonstrate that stelae were used to monumentalise certain tombs, either as standing markers or as covering slabs. On the other hand, the new data make it possible to definitively overcome the traditional historical-cultural approach that separated two 'groups' or 'types' of stelae, the so-called 'warrior' and 'diademadas', as functional or chronologically different. These stelae coexisted in the same necropolis, and furthermore the motifs they present, whether symbols associated with the head (headdresses or haloes), or panoplies of weapons, appear fluidly in one or the other, mixing. With the new data obtained in Las Capellanías, a new stage opens in the investigation of these magnificent prehistoric monuments, which until now were very poorly understood.