EMBODYING GREEK-IBERIAN INTERACTION Sara Aguilar

13. DAMA DE ELCHE: EMBODYING GREEK-IBERIAN INTERACTION Sara Aguilar This article started as a seminar paper in a series entitled West and East. By East, most of the papers meant the Near East as opposed to Greece, the West. In my paper, however, the East is the eastern Mediterranean, with special emphasis on Greece, and the West is the furthermost part of the Mediterranean, the Iberian Peninsula. Despite this shift of location the issues addressed remain the same: the contact between two (or more) cultures, and perhaps accultura tion between them. These issues are perhaps even more obvious in the western Mediterranean where it is taken for granted that the barbarian locals entered into 'History' by the civilising action of the Greeks. When we talk of interaction it is important to be certain of what exactly we mean: the study of contact per se (mechanisms of contact) or the possible consequences of this contact. In this paper I set out to do two things: (I) I will discuss how the contact between Greeks and Iberians has been studied in the past or, in other words, how some features of the local culture have been explained in terms of Iberian contact with 'Greek colonists'. From this perspective sculp ture becomes the quintessential example, and the lady of Eiche does indeed embody Graeco-lberian interaction, not only for what 'really happened' but also for scholars' interpretations (what we wanted it to be). (2) I will focus on an internal study of the peoples of the south-east of Spain in the 6th century and first part of the 5th cen tury B.C. by examining how sculpture could have fit into their social organisation. To simplify the argument in the restricted space of this paper I will not discuss the channels of Greek influence, but I will assume that local populations had contacts with Greek peoples through trade. 332 S. AGUILAR The Sculptures Major stone sculpture in Iberian territory is found from the begin ning of the 6th century B.C. in the area of the south-east of Spain (Fig. 1). Although the tradition continues into the Roman period it is apparent from archaeological data that the peak (or a peak) moment in the use of sculpture (especially with a funerary function) is the Early Iberian Period of the first half of the 5th century B.C. The discovery and study of Iberian sculpture (from the 1880s onwards) has generated a vast bibliography, focusing especially on problems of dating, influences and origins, and more recently of clas sifying and cataloguing. Finally, internal studies are currently being carried out. They are especially important since, for the first time, they concentrate on Iberian sculpture as such rather than on its study as mere reflections of eastern Mediterranean models. In this paper I will not be using the complete extant corpus of Iberian sculpture. Instead I will concentrate only on some, namely the sphinxes, the group from Porcuna and the Lady of Elche. Selection is always an arbitrary act, often validated by different reasons. In this case, one of my reasons is purely practical: these sculptures are well published and fairly accessible. More specifically, my chosen sculptures are representative of the issues under discussion. However, I do not think that these examples are necessarily better than others. I will present here a brief description and some of the interpreta tions which are relevant for the discussion. The sphinxes, mostly fragmentary, have been extensively described and catalogued by T. Chapa (1980; 1985). This author stresses the fact that, with the exception of two of the sphinxes (an oriental import from Galera and the sphinx from Villaricos), the Greek influence on the group is clear, not only in stylistic characteristics but also in their functionality. The sphinxes, generally found out of context, are considered to belong to funerary monuments perhaps culminating a pillar-stele or as part of the block of a more complex monument of the tower type, following Almagro's typology.' 1 For a typology of funerary monuments of this area see: Almagro Gorbea 1983. .

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