Tomlinscote School and SixForm College / IES Alhamilla Exchange ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM ALMERÍA GUIDED TOUR 15 October 2019 The museum was built in 1934, it had different locations. The new building opened in March 2006 together with both the square and the layout of the collections have been considered of a high artistic level. "The museum, a huge prism closed on itself, is a mystery to us" Inside we find the piece that most impressed me as a child, a skull 1 that I thought indicated an aggression, as it had its forehead pierced. But the reality is more surprising ... Museum and something else: guided tours, temporary exhibitions, conference site, work rooms, library. A space open to the people in Almeria and those who visit us. Information is not only found in the exhibits, but also on the walls, text and image panels, audiovisuals, models, screens. The Square. A place where the people in the neighborhood mingle with each other. Craft activities, markets, artistic performances ... are carried out regularly. Girls and boys come with their families and pets and enjoy this space every day. On the side we notice a sign of identity of our "archeological": It shows that half of the history is made by women, so the drawing of human evolution is represented in feminine. The Ground floor. We are welcomed by the cloud of "Siret", reproductions of some of its magnificent sheets. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Louis Siret led the discovery of the sites that placed Almeria in the European centre of recent prehistory studies. The stratigraphic column. Thirteen metres high, it represents the 16 levels found in the Ciaviejas (El Ejido) site. All societies that are studied in the museum are represented. What we will not see. There are only 900 exhibits. About 90,000 are stored in the basement. Some are used for temporary exhibitions, loans ... and are used for research. The museum also has a modern room for restoration and conservation. First floor. The producing societies. Around the year 5000 BC. there is already a Neolithic population in what is now the province of Almeria. They are groups of sedentary people, who practice agriculture and livestock. We can see samples of the instruments they used in the small room: Carved and polished stone, ceramics, looms (loom weights and fusayolas), ... In the corridors we find replicas of cave paintings, among them the symbol of our province: El Indalo. The society of Los Millares. Different deposits that had close relations with each other is what we call society of Los Millares (3200-2250 BC). It’s precisely in the place with that name (near the current Santa Fe) where we find the most formidable town of that time in Europe west of Italy, reaching more than a thousand inhabitants. An impressive wall of more than three hundred metres long, dozens of circular cabins within the walls and beyond them more than a hundred collective graves. Along with the improvement of the tools used in the Neolithic we find the first instruments made of molten copper. Among the most prominent pieces, 1) a skull with a hole in the forehead, which is the result of a 1Only this skull is a bone of the times studied. The others exposed are recent replicas or bones. "Real" bones are stored for conservation and study. medical operation. 2) One of the few remains of wood of the time. 3) Objects decorated with the so- called "suneyes". The exhibition is divided into a part (circle of life) dedicated to the activities of the town, including samples of an important trade and another (circle of death) with the trousseau (grave goods) found in the tombs. A current sculpture reminds us of the importance of "production and maintenance of bodies" for the continuity of human groups. Second floor. The Argaric Society. Between 2250 and 1500 BC in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula (provinces of Almería, Murcia, and areas of Jaén, Granada and Alicante). One of its main towns is in the Argar (in the municipality of Antas, Levante Almeriense). The society will begin to know the Bronze. But what stands out is that its organization is structured in very differentiated social classes and there is a State that controls society as a whole. For the first time on the peninsula we find instruments that only serve as weapons. The burials (of one, two or three people) allow us to know the great social differences and also the distribution of tasks between genders. Not all skeletons are the same. Where the grave goods (the pieces found in the tombs) are poorer, the bones also reflect the diseases and deformations caused by the hardness of the supported work. There are typical pieces of women (the punch in all social classes and the diadem reserved for those at the top of the social pyramid) and others of men (the ax as a working instrument and the halberd, in the upper classes , as a combat weapon). The ceramics show a magnificent technical capacity, but it is very little varied and without decoration, fruit of the control exercised by those who held power. Infant mortality was very strong, especially in the poorest classes. Third floor. Roman Society and Commerce in the Southeast. 2nd century BC - 4th century It shows how they lived in these lands when they were dominated by the Roman Empire. This small room is an example of how heritage can help us understand how a society works. Different social groups, work techniques, cultural and religious elements. Al-Mariyya, part of al-Amdalux. 8th to 15th centuries. The most important time for the city of Almeria. It is poorly treated in this museum, but you will be able to get to know something about it during the visit to the Alcazaba. Periods not covered in the museum. The archeological museum of Almeria has focused on four moments in the history of the people who have inhabited these lands, but there are very important periods that are not covered. There are many samples of these periods in the collection of the museum. The heritage of Almeria abroad. Samples of Almeria heritage can be found all over the world, especially in the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid. Or even in the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), where you can find the Renaissance courtyard of the castle of Velez- Blanco. The Museum on social networks and the web: You can find much more information about what you have seen on the Internet. The official website is http://www.museosdeandalucia.es/web/museodealmeria. Through them you can access their presence on the networks and multiple resources. More heritage of Almeria from the IES Alhamilla.A page linked to the activities we do from our school is https://millarenseurcitano.wordpress.com/patrimonio/ . Le agradecemos la traducción a Pilar Gallo. Profesora de Inglés y organizadora del intercambio..