Ever since the Bronze Age, relationships between the West and the Mediterranean have been intense, with far-reaching impacts on the organisation of societies. One of the oldest and most significant testimonies of these relationships and their effects is the adoption of writing during the first Iron Age of the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, from the 7th century BCE. This adoption takes place in the context of a general phenomenon of urbanisation of those communities, from which the towns and cities of this part of the world were born.
In the Peninsular Southwest, around the mythical city of Tartessos and through the region’s contacts with the Phoenicians, funerary epigraphy, the oldest known writing of the West, gains special relevance.
The funerary stele from Abóbada, Almodôvar (from the Arabic almudaûár), is a good example of these manifestations, with the inscription surrounding the representation of a man, dressed in the style of the Iberian warriors depicted, for example, on ceramics from Llíria (Valencia).
The continuation of these contacts brought to the Iberian Peninsula a continual flow of imports, particularly of Greek ceramics, which reached a peak during the 4th century BCE. A significant group of these ceramics was found in the necropolis of Olival do Senhor dos Mártires, close to Alcácer do Sal — the ancient Bevipo, the Roman Salacia, the Muslim al-Qasr — showing the efforts those communities made in the social representation of their most eminent members, not only through epigraphy, but also in the care given to the sumptuous grave goods that accompanied the deceased. The scene depicted, an agonistic sacrifice made by young ephebes, would also have appealed to an aristocratic sector of society that imported this and other vases.
Contacts with the Mediterranean were continuous for more than a millennium, mainly with the integration of Lusitania into the Roman Empire, of which it was the westernmost of the provinces, situated at the limits of the known world. But the distance was never an insurmountable obstacle, as it continued not to be the case in the period of Muslim expansion.
The people of the West did not lose their taste for representations, as attested by the “Vaso de Tavira”, whose impressive plastic decoration (fourteen figures, of which twelve have survived) seems to allude to a nuptial abduction, where there are depicted warriors, musicians (playing drum and adufe) and various animals, including doves on a tower. The vase, by the context and its technical characteristics, is a late-11th / early-12th century production, made at some point after the town of Tabîra had gained prominence within the organisation of the region under caliphal rule and the, posterior, taifa (independent Muslim principality) of Shantamariyya al-Gharb / Santa Maria do Ocidente [Saint Mary of the West], name by which the present-day Faro was known at the time. Another important town of Gharb al-Andalus was Mārtulah (Mértola), that also has roots dating back to the Iron Age, which, after the disintegration of Almoravid dominion (in the mid-12th century), became autonomous under the authority of Tashfin al-Lamtuni. This century marked the peak and greatest spread of glazed ceramics using the “total cuerda seca” technique (an expression referring to the method of isolating the glazed areas of the different colours). One of the achievements of this technique, in addition to the very common representation of animals and floral motifs, is the inscription of baraka (blessing), where ceramicists made the most of the graphic potential of Arabic script, using the word, which is represented by the three consonants, as a motif that is simultaneously decorative and religious.
