¿Qué sabemos del Cantar de Fernán González?

The Poem or Book of Fernán González was probably written c. 1250 by a monk of San Pedro de Arlanza (Burgos, Castile) to strengthen the legendary foundation of his monastery by the tenth-century Castilian Count, Fernán González, and to promote his tomb cult there. The Arlanza poet was competing with the benefits that Santiago and San Millán de la Cogolla were trying to get on legendary accounts of the champion of the independence of the County of Castile from the Kingdom of León. It is clear that this is a work of monastic propaganda, designed to attract pilgrims and donations; therefore perhaps a better title for it would be Poem of the Foundation of San Pedro de Arlanza. The Arlanza poet was fond of the popular and orally transmitted Romance epics (Hispanic and Carolingian songs). He knew Siete infantes de Salas, the tradition of the Youthful Deeds of Rodrigo (Gesta de las Mocedades de Rodrigo), the anti-Carolingian song(s) of Bernardo del Carpio, and the Roncesvals Matière. We also suspect that the poet was recasting a now-lost epic cantar de gesta of Fernán González. This cantar was probably also known by Gonzalo de Berceo, who was actively working in San Millán de la Cogolla, a few years earlier, trying to attract pilgrims and donations. In this article, I try to analyze how much we know of the lost Cantar de Fernán González and if the Monastery of Sahagún (León) also reappropriated it for its own propaganda.     

Khao Sam Kaeo – an archaeometallurgical crossroads for trans-asiatic technological traditions

Recent archaeological investigations at Khao Sam Kaeo, on the Upper Thai-Malay Peninsula, have furnished evidence for a mid/late 1st millennium BCE cultural exchange network stretching from the Indian subcontinent to Taiwan. Typological, compositional and technological study of Khao Sam Kaeo's copper-base artefacts has identified three distinct copper-alloy metallurgical traditions, with reasonable analogies in South Asian, Vietnamese, and Western Han material culture. Furthermore, analyses of technical ceramic and slag suggest that Khao Sam Kaeo metalworkers may have been using a cassiterite cementation process to produce high-tin bronze ingots for export or onsite casting/forging. Not only would this industry constitute the earliest evidence for the exploitation of Peninsula tin resources, but we also offer a speculative argument for the source of Khao Sam Kaeo's copper-base production technology.     

Temporal nature and recycling of Upper Paleolithic artifacts: the burned tools from the Molí del Salt site (Vimbodí i Poblet,northeastern Spain)

Recent research in Paleolithic archeology has stressed the importance of temporal issues in assemblage interpretation. Archeological assemblages are temporal constructs, formed by the addition of an unknown number of depositional events. This temporal dimension is also evident at the artifactual level, since single artifacts may undergo different events of modification and/or uses over time. The recycling of previously discarded blanks for tool production is one of the best examples of the temporal nature of artifacts. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the importance of recycling in a Late Upper Paleolithic site, examining a type of artifact – burned tools – that has up to now been little used to approach this issue. Our results suggest that recycling was probably a significant component of Upper Paleolithic provisioning behavior, with important implications in site formation processes and the typological variability of assemblages. The expedient or curated character of recycling is also discussed.     

An Osteological Study of Trophy Heads: Unveiling the Headhunting Practice in Borneo

Taking, modifying and displaying human body parts as trophies have been observed in several human groups since prehistoric times. Although there are many skeletal collections that present evidence for this practice, the existence of both skeletal material and written records referring to the same group is quite rare. Nevertheless, this is a case of 112 human skeletal remains collected by Charles Hose in Borneo in the late 19th century, which represents a unique opportunity to understand the vanished headhunting tradition and warfare practice in this area, as well as to compare the written records with the bioarchaeological evidence. Although Hose claims that all individuals collected by him were beheaded, our study shows that only 50.5% of the studied material show clear osteological signs of decapitation. Other practices which were part of the ritual of headhunting described by Hose could be observed, like widening of foramen magnum, burning of skulls, mandible tied to the cranium with a strip of rattan or cotton, as well as drilled perforations to suspend skulls in longhouses. Adult females and non‐adults comprised more than one third of the total number where sex and age could be determined, showing that males were not the sole targets for trophy heads. Overall, this study on the trophy skulls from Borneo is valuable as it combines and compares ethnographic accounts and osteological data to provide us with a broader scenario of a vanished practice. It draws attention to some aspects that should be taken into account when working exclusively with either written records or skeletal materials, as both present limitations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Unraveling a Neanderthal palimpsest from a zooarcheological and taphonomic perspective

Practically all archeological assemblages are palimpsests. In spite of the high temporal resolution of Abric Romaní site, level O, dated to around 55 ka, is not an exception. This paper focuses on a zooarcheological and taphonomic analysis of this level, paying special attention to spatial and temporal approaches. The main goal is to unravel the palimpsest at the finest possible level by using different methods and techniques, such as archeostratigraphy, anatomical and taxonomical identification, taphonomic analysis, faunal refits and tooth wear analysis. The results obtained are compared to ethnoarcheological data so as to interpret site structure. In addition, activities carried out over different time spans (from individual episodes to long-term behaviors) are detected, and their spatial extent is explored, allowing to do inferences on settlement dynamics. This leads us to discuss the temporal and spatial scales over which Neanderthals carried out different activities within the site, and how they can be studied through the archeological record.     

Application of a new typological approach to classifying denticulate and notched tools: the study of two Mousterian lithic assemblages

Identifying tools by means of morphological attributes are widely used in lithic studies to categorize retouched artifacts from different archaeological periods. This procedure has facilitated the exchange of information between separate researchers and has improved the comparison of different assemblages. In these classifications, denticulates and notched tools have been regularly interpreted as analogues and chronologically unvaried in different and vast territories. Based on the definitions developed by Bordes, the denticulate category has become a catchall for any kind of tool bearing concavities. In this paper a new quantitative approach to the classification of denticulates and notched tools is proposed. The new methodology is based on measuring the length of notches and their distribution on the perimeter of the blank. Analyzing the lithic series of the Abric Romaní rock-shelter (Spain) and Grotta Maggiore di San Bernardino (Italy) led to the identification of 11 redundant forms: eight denticulates and three notched tools. Moreover, the application of Kuhn’s Geometric Index of Unifacial Reduction brought local manufacturing trends to light, calling into question the presumed geographical uniformity of these categories of artifacts.     

Epitomising the Modern Spanish Nation through Popular Music: Coplas from La Caramba to Concha Piquer, 1750–1990

Music is an important language of the emotions and can often arouse strong passions in its performance and representation, both from the individual's perspective of personal identity and for the individual's sense of identity and of belonging to a given community. Likewise, music can serve to whip up and reinforce nationalism and national chauvinism against the ‘other’ as well as serving as a badge of identity. In this article I explore a musical form, a song that has been defined as ‘Spanish’ and as the ‘national’ song: la copla. Copla is rooted in the past and first appeared as both a poetic and a theatrical form, but always accompanied by music. It was, however, during the eighteenth century, when nationalism made its appearance as a ‘concern’ in the Spanish political‐cultural arena, when coplas would be used as a mark of Spanish identity. Copla is a women's song. Although it has been interpreted by men, some of them internationally renowned like Miguel de Molina, the most famous performers have been and still are women. That is why perhaps a recurrent theme of coplas is unrequited love, whereby love and passion play an important role, either with regard to the individual or the community from which the individual hails. But there are also other themes such as the longing stimulated by alien rule, which is reflected by cultural opposition and resistance to discourses of power, not only in terms of open opposition, but in a more subtle form of resistance, particularly in gender terms. I claim that it is precisely this resistance to fixed discourses of gender that have made coplas excellent negotiators with the different musical, social and political contexts and in this way have made them an icon of the invented tradition that is fundamental in the creation of a nation.     

Reconstruction of the Rib Vaults of the Hypostyle Hall in the Maniace Castle of Siracusa After the 1693 Earthquake

Built in the first half of the 13th century on behalf of the Emperor Frederick II, the Maniace Castle of Siracusa focuses its enigma in the hypostyle hall (which was composed of 25 quadripartite rib vaults) and the design criteria adopted for its implementation. Recent research and a careful rereading of the documentary “restoration project” after the earthquake of 1693 have offered new tools to understand the construction techniques and building procedures for the entire organism. It has been possible to demonstrate that the different material (white limestone and volcanic stone) used for the vaults is, in fact, a product of reconstruction. The constructive node, which historiography has taken for granted, is now crucial—the documentary evidence of the restoration after the earthquake compared with the materials found in situ provide interpretive keys to decode genesis and procedures of the huge structure built five centuries before.     

The history of stones: behavioural inferences and temporal resolution of an archaeological assemblage from the Middle Palaeolithic

Behavioural issues are a main focus of current Palaeolithic research, especially where the archaeological record of archaic hominids is concerned. Often these issues are approached using archaeological assemblages that are palimpsests defined exclusively by stratigraphic criteria. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether such assemblages are adequate for solving behavioural questions. As a case study, we will present the lithic provisioning strategies documented in level L of the Abric Romaní Middle Palaeolithic site. The results of this study suggest that the number of events and/or the amount of time included in the archaeological assemblages could be relevant when explaining the interassemblage variability, given that palimpsests tend to reduce the behavioural variability. If we want to approach the behavioural domain, we need archaeological assemblages of higher temporal resolution, defined through the identification of single activity events.