Historia de tesoros, tesoros con historia (Stories of Treasures, Treasures with History) is the title of a recent book on Bronze Age and Early Iron Age gold from Iberia, edited by Alonso Rodríguez Díaz, Ignacio Pavón Soldevila, and David M. Duque Espino, and published by the Universidad de Extremadura, Cáceres (Spain). This volume gathers texts from a meeting held at Cáceres in October 2016, concerning a selection of major well-known gold hoards from Spain and presenting results from several research projects as well as individual studies. The case studies comprise hoards from the autonomous communities of Andalusia, Extremadura, Valencia, and Castilla y León. Eleven well-illustrated contributions are presented over 364 pages. After a first chapter introducing the concept of ‘treasure’, and the meaning of gold hoards in particular, the sequence of contributions follows chronologically. Several of the spectacular hoards are presented twice by different authors, or at least different lead authors, offering diverse points of view. These twofold considerations concern the gold assemblages from Aliseda (Cáceres, Extremadura), Arrabalde (Zamora, Castilla y León), El Carambolo (Seville, Andalusia), and Villena (Alicante, Comunidad Valenciana), while the Berzocana (Cáceres, Extremadura) hoard is dealt with only once. In addition, one contribution puts forward several gold finds from Extremadura that are kept in museum collections outside their initial geographical area or that have disappeared.

The book title evokes significant gold assemblages and the focus on their historiographies and biographies, combining archaeological and documentary research. The term ‘tesoro’ (‘treasure’) appears to be familiar in Spanish archaeology whilst English, French, and German scientific publications favour the term ‘hoard’ (dépôt; Hort). In contrast, the term ‘treasure’ (trésor; Schatz) is typically used in common language and associated with treasure hunters, treasure trove, spectacular discoveries, and treasures in sagas and folk tales.

The volume offers numerous perceptions of gold hoards with a combined reading of reality and fantasy, passion, and attributes of social rank, with regional and supra-regional viewpoints. It features treasures discovered, lost, robbed, or sold; and gold figuring in sense and imagination, myth and legend. Moreover, concerning the nature and motivation of deposition—such as cultural, funerary, or political—the contributions also touch upon the theme of decision makers, political implications, and power relations. The diversity of aspects referred to also includes popular literature and folklore without any basis in historical fact.

In the first chapter, entitled ‘El Tesoro arqueológico o la serependia desatada’, Pablo Ortiz Romero introduces ‘The Archaeological Treasure or the Unleashed Serendipity’, since many ancient hoards were discovered by chance by non-archaeologists. His careful considerations lead the reader into the myth and imaginary surrounding the treasure and a whole range of different kinds of value that can be attributed to the trove and the finder. Similarly, the various steps after the original finding are considered, including the handling by official authorities and integration in archaeological collections and investigations. Using several case studies, the author draws an excellent picture covering a panoply of treasures. He goes beyond the restricted choice of particular late prehistoric gold assemblages in the book by covering the larger picture of gold finds. His vision enlarges the repertoire with ancient and recent discoveries, including medieval treasures. He goes back into ancient documents and draws a rich outline of background stories rarely told in relation to sensational archaeological findings.

Two chapters address the spectacular gold artefacts from Villena, Alicante. In ‘Los tesoros de Villena (Alicante)’ (‘The Treasures from Villena (Alicante)’), Mauro S. Hernández Pérez offers insights into the historiography and find circumstances of several Bronze Age gold finds from the Villena area, composed of different object types. His study includes discoveries from the 1960s at Cabezo Redondo, and from the Rambla del Panadero, as well as more recent finds from the hill of Cabezo Redondo. He reviews the Late Bronze Age dating for the Rambla del Panadero hoard, but his hypothesis that the three gold hoards from the Villena area were buried contemporaneously is debatable. On the other hand, the documentation revealing the local reception of the hoard is very welcome. Images of gold items used in the public sphere shed new light on an amazing dimension of these major archaeological finds, which is the identification of the local community with these very ancient precious things.

In the second Villena contribution, entitled ‘El tesoro de Villena: caracterización, uso y función de una ocultación de la Edad del Bronce’ (‘The Villena Treasure: Characterization, Use, and Function of a Bronze Age Concealment’), Gabriel García Atiénzar and Virginia Barciela González take a closer look at the gold and silver hoard found at the Rambla del Pandero. This contribution recapitulates a large amount information from various previous authors, regarding the chemical alloy composition (erroneously labelled ‘metallographic’), shapes, weights, and techniques. The new diagrams produced from ancient data are welcome. However, nearly all explanations regarding technological features are utterly wrong and inappropriate, although the papers cited give correct technical descriptions. Oddly enough, technical drawings showing the manufacturing sequence of sheet flasks and their decoration (p. 68) are wrongly explained, indicating the opposite of the real manufacturing technique. Also, the related citation is misleading, as it quotes the wrong article. Furthermore, embarrassing errors related to diverging weights arise in the two chapters related to the Villena hoard. The differing indications on weights concerning the Villena gold and silver are unintelligible. For the gold items, the total weight of 9754 g (p. 43, in chapter by Hernández Pérez) differs considerably from the total of 9112 g mentioned on page 62. Likewise, the Villena silver is declared on page 43 as a total of 600 g against a total of 655 g on page 62. Consequently, this contribution cannot be recommended and should definitely be revised.

In the first of four chapters focussing on gold ornaments from Extremadura, Juan Javier Enríquez Navascués discusses single gold objects and hoards from Chalcolithic and Bronze Age contexts that moved abroad from their original find region. His contribution ‘Tesoros que se fueron. Piezas áureas del Calcolítico y Edad del Bronce que emigraron de Extremadura’ (‘Treasures that Left: Copper Age and Bronze Age Goldwork that Emigrated from Extremadura’) comprises the case studies of well-known hoards from Bodonal, Navalvillar de Pela, or Sagrajas, kept in the collections of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid. It also features the Mérida gold assemblage that moved to the British Museum in London, and lesser known gold ornaments that went to unknown collections, or were melted down by goldsmiths. One single example, the Valedeobispo gold hoard, illustrates a splendid ‘treasure’ that left and came back.

The next three studies of gold from Extremadura are authored by the three editors David M. Duque Espino, Alonso Rodríguez Díaz, and Ignacio Pavón Soldevila, with different ordering of the authors. ‘El tesoro de Berzocana: los rastros del hallazgo’ (‘The Berzocana Treasure: The Traces of the Discovery’) provides a detailed account of the find circumstances of the mixed hoard of solid gold ornaments in a bronze vessel discovered in 1961 at Berzocana, near Cáceres, and kept in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid. This study includes evidence of the complex legal procedures motivated by the illegal disposal of the finds. So, the ‘intra-history’ (the concept coined by philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, akin to that of ‘micro-history’) of gold ‘treasures’ can reveal quite dark sides of shining discoveries. The authors also provide an in-depth archaeological analysis that goes beyond the previously published information.

An extraordinary chance find made at Aliseda in Extremadura in 1920 is addressed in two studies by the same co-authors. The chapter ‘El tesoro de Aliseda: de la “historia oficial” a la intrahistoria’ (‘The Aliseda Treasure: From the “Official Version” to its Intra-history’), by Pavón Soldevila and colleagues, features a passionate biography of this outstanding funerary hoard, and proposes a newly revised version of the discovery chronicle. Old documents, including sketches and photographs, of the find spot and the persons involved reveal the complicated discovery of the assemblage of gold and bronze ornaments and vessels, which is interpreted as a funerary hoard. Other archival documents such as official letters and scientific notes of senior university members contrast with the official version and reveal the intra-histories which underlie the troubled journey of these finds. Insights into museum regulations show how this hoard was finally integrated, as in the previous case, in the collections of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional.

In the following chapter, ‘Aproximación al contexto de las joyas de Aliseda: reinventando la tradición’ (‘A Contextual Approach to the Study of the Aliseda Goldwork: Reinventing Tradition’), the same authors (lead by Rodríguez Díaz) provide insights on the natural setting of the find spot, the organisation of the surrounding territory, and excavation work, endowed with a remarkable corpus of documentation consisting of aerial photographs, excavation plans, and reconstructions. This chapter also offers a novel characterization of the social and ritual meaning of the precious ornaments and vessels. Furthermore, it highlights the excavation of the ritual site of Las Cortinas, interpreted as a sanctuary building with periodic use, and puts forward a new hypothesis on the use of the Aliseda jewellery and table ware in the context of ritual practices.

Two chapters devoted to the magnificent El Carambolo hoard, found in 1958 and part of the collections of the Seville Archaeological Museum, discuss new interpretations of the Tartessian context and the ritual function of the gold ornaments. In the first, ‘El hallazgo del tesoro del Carambolo y la invención de la arqueología tartésica’ (‘The Discovery of the Carambolo Treasure and the Invention of Tartessian Archaeology’), presented by Eduardo Ferrer Albelda, the reader is introduced to a short history of the concept and the manifold facets of the archaeology of Tartessos, from the ideas of historians up to the real archaeological facts. The enigmatic term ‘Tartessos’ is loaded with semantic and legendary meanings, and associated with the myth of a lost city, as are the decontextualized finds of the gold hoard. The author contextualizes the Tartessos phenomenon and demonstrates the changing of paradigms and of interpretative models concerning Tartessos as an archaeological culture since the 1990s. Jose Luis Escacena Carrasco offers in the following chapter, entitled ‘Diis tauris sacrum. Las joyas del Carambolo como atuendo litúrgico’ (‘Diis tauris sacrum: The Carambolo Jewellery as Liturgical Attire’), a discussion of several aspects of the symbolic and ceremonial function of gold objects in ritual contexts, leading to a novel interpretation of gold ornaments from El Carambolo as liturgical attributes of a cult related to the bull (Taurus). He revises the previous idea that all gold items were used as personal adornment of a priest or aristocratic figure and suggests a new reading of them as the attire of a person and two bulls. The author corroborates his original proposal with some thorough research into Near Eastern religious practices, comparing object shapes and function.

The last two contributions are related to two exceptional pre-Roman gold and silver assemblages found in 1980 and 1988 with uncertain contexts. In ‘De nuevo sobre los tesoros prerromanos de Arrabalde (Zamora)’ (‘Again on the Pre-Roman Treasures of Arrabalde (Zamora)), Germán Delibes de Castro offers critical in-depth research on the find context, archaeological setting, and chronology, as well as the assemblage composition, which includes ornaments and vessels. He draws a picture of the ornament's individual character, belonging to a Celtiberian style with an Asturian touch, raising questions of local or itinerant craftspeople. The author outlines the importance of considering a probable pre-monetary function of gold and silver jewellery during the period linked to the Roman conquest. In the chapter ‘Un contexto para los tesoros de Arrabalde: el castro de las Labradas’ (‘A Context for the Arrabalde Treasures: The Hillfort of Labradas’), Ángel Esparza Arroyo presents the entire characteristics of the hillfort of Las Labradas, linking it chronologically to the Roman conquest and thus to the contemporaneous precious metal hoards. This is the only contribution focussing on an archaeological site to provide a plausible context for gold hoards without precise context.

The real contribution and particular value of this book is the effort to merge a large variety of perspectives and to scrutinize the precise historiography and biography of each hoard. It also searches for early references concerning the discovery and excavation up to the final integration of the gold objects into museum collections, and offers excellent and detailed illustrations. This comprehensive archival work is original, as is the research into public media and local annals, received wisdom, as well as old documentary records in museum collections and local archives. The aspect of the investigations that makes the stories and background knowledge accessible is particularly valuable and goes well beyond previous works and syntheses in Spanish publications. It also features the revision, as well as a new reading, of certain treasures, offering novel interpretations and perspectives. The detailed reconstruction of how treasures were integrated in contemporary memory and the popular imagination, as well as the local and broad appropriation of these gold items, is likewise remarkably well developed. Another fresh angle for approaching these hoards deals with the popular reception and use of images, shapes, and decoration in commercial advertising (e.g. local products’ packaging) or even in local public spaces (with examples of monuments, soil cover tiles, and others), connecting the identity of locals with the glorious history of their hometown or region. In addition, information about the criminal side of the story sheds light on ancient falsified chronicles and fraudulent sales of precious things.

Apart from disapproval linked to some misleading interpretations of manufacturing techniques, it should be noted critically that the presented gold research remains quite locally focussed and lacks opening out to an international setting. Thus, the authors focus on their own Iberian context without apparently any interest in drawing comparisons with material from neighbouring regions (i.e. the Atlantic façade and the Mediterranean). Even certain significant works published on Spanish and Portuguese Bronze Age and Iron Age gold hoards, such as research by Alicia Perea, Volker Pingel, Wilhem Schüle, or myself, among others, are barely considered if at all.

The above comment does not preclude in any way the value of this book. Historia de tesoros, tesoros con historia is a passionate storytelling volume using novel approaches to ‘intra-histories’, biographies, and the interpretation of gold hoards from Bronze Age and Iron Age Iberia, going well beyond purely narrative histories. It offers stimulating discussion of late prehistoric gold with a dialogue between archaeological and archival data. Discussions on deposition practices in the past, the histories of discovery, the background stories, and the interdisciplinary methodologies required to study them are particularly revealing. I heartily recommend this book to anybody interested in later prehistoric gold in general and gold hoards from Iberia in particular.