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book: Heraldry for the Dead
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Heraldry for the Dead

Memory, Identity, and the Engraved Stone Plaques of Neolithic Iberia
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2008

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

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    vii
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    Acknowledgments

    ix
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    Introduction

    1
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    1. Themes

    7
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    2. Variations

    38
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    3. Biographies

    76
    Alexander P. Woods
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    4. Agency and ambiguity

    114
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    5. An Iberian writing system

    141
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    6. memory and identity in neolithic Iberia

    170
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    Notes

    177
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    Bibliography

    181
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    Illustration credits

    201
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    Index

    207
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
November 3, 2021
eBook ISBN:
9780292794184
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
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https://doi.org/10.7560/718227
eBook ISBN: 9780292794184
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
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