Free Republic

Sacred Precincts: A Tartessian Sanctuary in Ancient Spain Sebastián Celestino and Carolina López-Ruiz When the Phoenicians arrived on the Iberian peninsula, probably at the end of the ninth century B.C., they came into contact with an indigenous people called the Tartessians. The two cultures soon fused. The hybrid culture produced by this fusion of peoples is evident in a mysterious structure at Cancho Roano, deep in the heart of south-central Spain. The structure at Cancho Roano is sometimes called a “palace-sanctuary” because of its monumentality. But it was not a palace at all; it was simply a Tartessian sanctuary, which...