Hillforts, rocks and warriors

• Main Author: Javier Rodriguez-Corral
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts) 2018-12-01
• Series: Documenta Praehistorica
• Subjects: Iron Age; iconography; liminality
• Online Access: https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/DocumentaPraehistorica/article/view/7743

During the Late Iron Age, monumental stone statues of warriors were established in the northwest of Iberia, ‘arming’ landscapes that ultimately encouraged specific types of semiotic ideologies in the region. This paper deals with how these statues on rocks not only worked in the production of liminality in the landscape – creating transitional zones on it –, but also how they functioned as liminal gateways to the past, absorbing ideas from the Bronze Age visual culture up to the Late Iron Age one, in order to create emotional responses to a new socio-political context.