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The conclusion for this series is associated with 7:8
The relevance of these diverse images to the potential narrative of the verraco will become apparent...
A general recap of the left-hand images.
I put forward the idea for 'Transport Dragons' as a way that helped clans of Homo Sapiens survived difficult conditions from their ages of prehistory, including ice, desert and even stretches of water (when a suitably well stretched frame is inverted). With the 'Transport Dragon', bulk weights of camp equipment (including leather and fur) are held tight using a peg and butterfly-knot based cord-leverage tool (currently uncategorized as 'Perforated baton') which I described in past posts and termed the 'tension lever'. Carried aloft aside the compressed camp goods would be pregnant, injured, young or old members of the clan i.e. the vulnerable and the precious. The 'Transport Dragon' frame offered both a redistribution of weight and a protection from the elements including cold winds, high heat and driving rain. These ideas were posted on Flickr from between February and March 2017.
Top left. A model of a horizontal Venus figurine representing a fertile woman carried during a journey on a simple frame. Pre hominid ancestors made and changed nest-like beds and refining those skills to help to keep a clan together when travelling in difficult conditions may have resulted in a simple platform held over the shoulder by four members of the clan - the birth of an idea that could help to define a species.
Lower left. I projected that the first real 'Transport Dragon' developed as a refinement and expansion of the basic frame: enlarged for multiple carriers to retain lifestyle essentials whilst protecting carriers from the bleak elements via leather pelts dropped down from a structural frame.
At this point it can be seen that a link to the principles of the 'managing the wild hypothesis of veraccos' exists. Long before the age of the verraco, and within the great ice ages, a clan, so visible on a vista as a line shadowed by footprints and smells, can - as a combined 'transport dragon', invert their relationship with predators. The apparent prey can attack, for whilst walking to salmon or reindeer rendezvous, the clan was vulnerable to attack from cave lions, hyenas, sabretooths and more. Sheltered within a transport dragon, the individuals can operate as a guise - a mythical animal attracting predators: looking out in secret, and replying to attack with pre-emptive preparation - in effect the core principles of a verraco. Man's mind grew up with this psychology, and principles could pass via long lost stories, stubborn residual examples, and from the collective consciousness of prehistory.
One essential that could also be carried within a 'Transport Dragon' was fire, held within the head of the mythical 'animal' in, for example, a basked weave covered in clay - a figure head quietly smoking, like breath on a cold day, ready to raw in the event of an attack. If attacked, the Transport Dragon could ignite real fire from managed embers, it could also defend as a combined crouch inside the thick leather housing, it could spear through slots, and 'the transport dragon' could also ultimately feed off predators, in between locations, without adding to archaeological settlement records or bone middens (an important detail regarding calculations of population levels). This social mentality of inverting issues of predator and prey may remind us of the "managing the wild theory of verracos" proposed in the adjacent post: 'Concluding prehistory. Function. 7:8'.
In another early post of this numbered series; "Concluding prehistory. The 'keys' of reality. 5:8" it was remarked that there seemed to be a potential influence on the verraco craftsmen of armature fed examples (weave and stretch) that may have existed outside of granite. I believe that 'Transport dragons' helped take modern man through extreme conditions, and the age of large predators, with ideas of God then held close with each clans chosen mythical or animal form. Here, God was plural for a real reason and man's sense of a globally important omnipotent 'being' a real world experience. As man removed the large predators, and the climate improved, the justification for this guised method of clan life will have faded, and examples of 'Transport Dragons' must have phase changed into rarer residues for festival and for remaining peripheral key clans: residuals, traders, holders of verbal data and quite literally living gods locked into spiritual pasts and futures. Each of these late transport dragons will have diversified according to the specific clan's idiosyncratic history: some with gargoyle-esque 'dragon heads', some with structures lined with 'ancient' pelts of multiple lion heads, some with just one eye, and others structured as half-man, half-animal: all as mythical creatures - all free to find logic from their rich and elaborated verbal pasts and fantasies. Here, the Sphinx might be understood as a regionally well-known example of an important ornamental manifestation of a late 'Transport Dragon' that was eventually stopped in a landscape and memorised as a mountain in stone. The long front legs simply a reflection of the ornate bars. The bronze age wheel as round as a full stop. By contrast to these fantastic and ornamental manifestations, as the miracle of domestication changed wild beasts into living associates, some late residual 'transport dragons' may have been shaped to elevate and worship these new pastoral real-world visions. Here, new ultra functional/descriptive animal varieties of the late 'Transport dragon' would celebrate the then terribly modern feats of man's very spirit of the time, and with clean lines and true empirical description they would have afforded distance from then more phantasmagorical ancient mythical examples. Sculptural and neo-realist late 'Transport dragons' celebrating the new domesticated 'cows', 'horses', 'pigs' and trained 'bears'. In their active age, there will have been 'Transport dragons' with aurock and bear heads smoking their slow fiery breath, and the then new Neolithic package must have asked for cleaner lines to mark contrast with the new spirit of mankind's domesticated wild. Here 'mythology's' Trojan horse was an ultra large and devious late pastoral transport dragon afforded bronze age wheels, and in the greater post Neolithic countryside, just such a weave and stretch animal was from a theme that was easily seen, and maybe some communities of craftsmen of these stitch-and-frame animals (lifted to float for assembled farming, crafting and trading publics) went on to carve in stone as the iron tools proved their presence and promise?
As people moved increasingly into scrublands, maybe the art of drawing-in danger was talked back into focus via stories associated with the last ceremonial 'transport dragons' bridging almost 9000 years with stubborn residuals and occasional local reapplications (strength and variety in meme). Here, the verraco concluded a long line of adaptations and expressions that had carried diversities of modern man past dangers from elements and sheer power, and around the planet earth. The 'conversations' between man and landscape, and man and other strong species moving from respectful out-witting competition, to distanced methodology and written protocols, in effect concluding prehistory.
The central image is from the Aboussouan collection, and was originally from Syria circa 4000ybp - so a mid bronze age. The wheel and carts arrived in the bronze age, and this early representation shows a concave lower interior level that makes little sense as a cart, but may retain a memory of the form of a late 'Transport Dragon', with head space and shoulder runs: no different here from the way that first cars 'remembered' earlier carts and carriages.
The last image is a verraco from the Medieval centre of Bragança in today's Portugal. It has no pedestal, and early medieval authorities seem to have wanted to put a stop to its sense of movement by skewering it with a definitive pillar. Implicit with the idea of verracos is that man had the strength and will to move them to help him attain protection from the wild. Stopping a verraco from moving was perhaps an attempt to stop their aura and pagan meaning from influencing early medieval rural communities.
Today, if we scan modern culture we may notice the scarecrow faintly asking pigeons and crows to go away like fay nemesis dilutions in threadbare. We can also see the pantomime-horse designed to play with an idea of a domesticated animal: to be ritually kicked in its behind for the pleasure of a clapping audience.
AJM 24.11.21
The outcrop of Roquecezière is here presented as a montage of three photographs. For this image, contemporary additions have been removed in Photoshop – hand rails, religious symbol and viewing platform. For a sense of scale, two approximative characters have been drawn into place, they appear to the left - click twice or press 'L'. Their hair-styles match a nearby statue menhir (7km) and the regularly observed shepherds cloak, belt and face paint are included. The viewer needs to add further details of bead and stitch; ornament and material - using their knowledge and imaginations to add the individual; likewise, the summit to the rock is pictured 'naked' and without wooden platform or structure, 'flag/bunting' and so on.
This outcrop is not a mountain top, and yet it grasps out of a ridge rise and views from the top are a natural navigation point of 360 degrees and include vivid long distance reference points for the river Rance statue menhir system and the hills and cliffs to the wider east. The views west pass aside the piedmont of the Montagne Noire and over the plane that today houses the city of Albi.
Roquecezière was a regional site for Christian pilgrimage that certainly seeded from the appropriation of a pre existing gathering point with roots in the ages of prehistory. Whilst there are some simple steps in the rock that may have distant origins, the site has seen so much life that any vestiges of prehistorical times may have been worn away or removed by relic hunting visitors and clerical revisionists from the 10th century and beyond. Links between this Roquecezière outcrop and the megaliths of Alban will be discussed and contrasted against the backdrop of statue menhirs that pepper the views from its summit.
The megalithic cluster in Alban (see below) seems to differ from the menhirs of the Statue Menhir country to its east in choosing a rock that is rich in geological detail and not apt for conversion into a statue menhir, which tend to use homogenous rocks for their schematic carvings. The vivid and crystalline megaliths of Alban are situated an hours walk from finely carved or smoothed menhirs from statue menhir country. Might the complex Alban rocks be representing different cultural issues also present during the megalithic ages?
When looking at prehistory and landscape, hypothesis are presented and tested. Here, several hypothesis are developed from past posts and texts that manifest in or intimately around the greater vista east of the summit. These different potential qualities of cultural expression coexisted without full chronology, so with temporal overlaps.
1. The statue menhirs of the Rance groups adhering to the Bondons menhir megasite via the breast disposition and 'Y' pendant - signalling beliefs of the fecundity of water (see below for past posts and robust arguments).
2. The Alban and Roquecezière monolithic and megalithic group are perhaps adhering to mineral detail rather than sculpted schema, alignment or placement. Quarts and other glittering rocks like mica produce a back-story to a subset of sites during the ages of megaliths, with some sites seemingly drawn to outcrops of crystal and others having powdered crystal as a burial rite. We have no way of knowing, but if the Rance group aligns to forces of flow and water, then we might look to another vivid element from a 'living' landscape that also appears in latter descriptions of society as seen from protohistory. Perhaps the reflecting metamorphic and igneous crystals were understood as living manifests of twinkling stars or the year's governance - the reflective sun?
3. The monolith d'Al Bosc of the Lacaune group of statue menhirs has crosses and canals that seem to be of a broadly neolithic style often present further to the south. I have put forward the hypothesis that these cups canals and crosses document new loyalties of merging clans and crofts as regions settled into landscapes of domestication. Here, four or five cups link into a cross, with the cups significance perhaps fading with time to procure a pre-Christian 'unity' cross of regional fellowship to help expand individual and family capacities when faced with problems from nature or bandits.
4. Just 12km north east of a statue menhir dense zone, the Roc de la Femnas offers an array of deep cups and canals. I would categorise this as a hunter's meeting point that documents people present and past relations in a way that can then be flexibly applied to other cultural and spiritual issues (see past posts).
It may be possible here to see a landscape that has multiple elements of symbolic abstraction without imploding with disagreement or exploding with faction-ism. Each of the above mentioned schematic elements and composite elements can help foster consent and common purpose.
Domestication asks for a sense of moral policing against bandits, which in my mind is the likeliest factor that shaped the early specialist martial roles - visible by the ages of metal, and so often described as warriors for war. Aside bandits (people who try to harvest from the work of others against their will), the whims of nature (drought and storm) are fixed and remembered into culture and landscape via transcendental carved stones – statues constantly reminding all people that rivers can both dry out and flood and water needs to be managed as a year long project.
Hominid populations so typical of plateaus and littorals can see far and wide including threads of smoke from fire place. A lifestyle is available where it is easy for an individual to head to either a path or junction to arrange to meet with passing or local people. In the steep and complex Rouergat hills visible from Roquecezière, eye contact is less frequent for real time crofters, and a dispersed population is afforded a wide reach of genetics, materials and skills via pilgrim loyalties to the eastern megasite loci of Bondons and, potentially to the west, a register for the worshipping of the sun in Roquecezière. Here, elements of culture, morality, spirituality, common sense and society are building without having to wait for town or city, without having to wait for the emergence of speciality roles in man. People are not waiting to become human in sync with the invention of writing. Nobody is waiting for the appearance of the official word for 'intellectual': architect, an engineer or baron to appear on the civilization horizon; nobody has asked to open Pandora's Teletubby toybox of dreamland Eden, nobody needed to turn-on a video game of points from constant warfare solutions, and nobody turned a page of a heroic fantasy of violent resolve. Man is a social animal and has skills to problem solve, empathise and emulate. These qualities cannot have been unpacked exclusively for a date towards the beginning of civilization, and these skills needed deep hominid time to fine-tune for collective benefits. The importance of spotting fakes, bandits and tricksters remains part of all man's landscape, and balancing these judgements with goodwill keeps mankind's tightrope tight. Man is both at war with his environment's extremes, and at peace with its bounty and beauty, and a capacity to navigate through these elements of 'hot' and 'cold' is the mind of man with the cognitive mind constantly steadying a balancing act.
Medieval stories linking Alban with Roquecezière abound, dividing the two sites with dramatic narrative hyperbole and heaven and hell dichotomies. Big vivid two dimensional stories that carry the stigma, division and taboo perhaps necessary for new feudal power to break resilient ancient belief systems, and in so doing centralise local feudal power away from the dispersed countryside and onto administrative and symbolic families. In the stories, responsibility for a fire in the main buildings of Roquecezière is attributed to an ambience of devilish behaviour, with the Alban group megaliths thrown by the devil 15km to their current position. Watching the dolmen's table land on the orthostates would have to have been an animated moment to witness.
AJM 06.05.20
Left, a google map flagging each known example of a Verraco. The outliers tend to be in museums and the dense cluster best illustrates the large active area that blends between late iron age tribal demographys. Whilst dominating the Vettone zone, there was no symbolic 'power' exclusivity, with verracos found in areas today considered as being of Callaeci, Lustitani and Astures 'categories'.
I adjusted the map so that comparisons of size can be made between the verraco 'area' and examples of today's territories, for example Switzerland, Belgium and Austria.
The data for the map was compiled for the website www.verracos.es/ and there are over 400 known examples, with many, many more either eaten by rivers, blocked in building foundations, sunken under fields or worn back into their granitic geology.
The date range of mid 4th to 1st centuries BC is often quoted, so within the optic of 2400ybp and into true protohistory, with its last real or struggling gasps from into the fade-away from prehistory through the first iron age centuries of history's early medieval.
Verracos are not slight ornaments and are physical objects that appear as large as life, even if some are regularly either side of real-world norms. Sculptures of pigs and cows and bulls dominate their number, with credible peripheral examples of horses, dogs, calves and even a human (on all fours!) also existing.
Centre. A Verraco of a cow from the archaeology stock room in Ávila. There is significant damage to the hoof 'layer', with the upper level suffering only from the softening effect of time's gently corrosive powers.
Right. Today's cows moo and munch from deep within the Verraco zone - specifically from the approach to the modest yet vivid castro of Pena Redona. A deep gorges is not far away with the existence of steep fluvial pathways perhaps being common to the greater verraco territory.
I first started to post some of my collection of images of verracos in September of this year. Today, by mid November, I am starting to post my arguments and conclusions about the cultural function and contexts of these enigmatic megaliths. These 8 numbered and associated posts follow and develop arguments via linked texts, with my past verraco posts offering supporting detail. My Flickr album of the same name will start with this 8 part text. I have not come across my explanation in reading, but that is not to say that it does not exist, and I will add and date any relevant complements.
The texts will try to understand the damage to these granite sculptures, and to see how these 'image animals' fitted in with a continuity of early agriculture and late megalitism. With my explanation, a function and place in society is proposed, as is an idea as to how they phase change out of past culture. And as the Roman invasions became a very real shadow on the horizon, an argument will be made that a Verraco marked an end of great living theatres - concluding a vision in prehistory.
AJM 15.11.21
The National Archives of Finland
Helsinki, Finland 2024.
Praktica MTL3
Asahi Pentax Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 35mm f3.5
Agfaphoto APX 100 shot at ISO 200
Compard R09 One Shot 1+90 semi-stand development 120min at 18-19°C
Agitation 1min + gently at 45 and 90 min
By ignoring any post prehistoric pagan significances and parallel redirections of signification by 'new' powers during the early medieval dark ages, it can be said that the age of verracos lasted just 400 or 500 years. This is not a long time for prehistory - a study area known for dealing thousands-of-years cards like a fast-talking hustler - but still, 500 years is around the number of generations needed to fill a time-space between today and 1521 when, for example, Henry the 8th was putting on weight. Plenty of time for generations, episodes, calendars and events.
The above tryptic shows three different veraccos representing what look to be a domesticated pig, if not, then a proximity to wild boars.
Left.
This version probably fell on its snout, and unluckily a large chunk came away. Perhaps the verraco fell from a height such as from the back of a cart, with the full weight caught on the sharp of its nostril? The rest of this example is in a near 'new' condition, and the base in particular does not seem to have suffered. Many, many verracos come or came with integrated pedestals, even if exceptions do stand out (see 8:8).
Centre.
There can be seen evidence of repeated hits or percussion impacts to the snout, and a great deal of percussive vertical drop on the lower edges - enough repeat force to remove the pedestal and hoof and lower leg, without removing large chunks, as was the case with the snout of the first example.
Right.
Here we see even less leg, and no vestige of a past pedestal. It would seem that there had been even longer periods of percussive attrition from vertical and forward drops.
With the great weight of the granite, the height need not be important, but the surface the verraco hit might be assumed to have a rocky content i.e. neither soil of hay, so perhaps tracks, bedrock and rocky scrubland. The back of this third verraco has also been carved with pits (or cups), and the face and snout has seen a bruising attrition from repeated small and medium falls and or blows.
It would seem to me that any arguments that verracos were designed to be associated with burial, clan ornamentation or vague symbolism would need to explain the signatures of damage. Without proper explanation it should be admitted that there was more to the verraco form-set.
AJM 15.11.21
Otis Redding is here performing Sam Cooke's 'Shake' live for the television special "Ready Steady Otis!", with Eric Burdon (singer of the Animals) sharing some of the vocals. The date is 1966 and the dancers Patricia Kerr, Cassandra Mahon and Sandy Sargeant erupted between the artists and audiences with a sassy and stylish commitment that remembers back to the age of Swing when Lindy Hop interthreaded the musicians and guests at the Harlem Savoy.
Looking back at the footage of the Otis special, is to see a space where music shared between people, and this single black and white television special must be understood as one of the inputs that seeded the dance hall movement of late sixties northern England known as 'Northern Soul'. Otis was black and Eric was white, and with the life force of the soul music and the drive of the dancers, the space was alive and in full colour.
Although Otis did not write the track 'Shake', he did make it his own, here, refusing to let it stop within an expected format and extending it with 'na's' that see him simply join in with the horn section as an applied chant. Singing half and quarter beats with the rhythm section (also enjoyed by James Brown) would be enough to give Otis a thread within musical history; on top he was a master craftsman of song, and his track '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay' is one of the finest short songs ever recorded. Add to this the fact that his live performances of "Try a Little Tenderness" were at the summit of dynamic energy, and Otis Redding importance to musical history is alive and assured.
The original television footage:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pKpfs5EK_s
Eric Burdon is well known for a house in the rising sun. An original folk form by Leadbelly can be heard here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5tOpyipNJs
Eric's classic version from 2 years prior to his evening with Otis:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-43lLKaqBQ
Otis Redding's '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," is another omnipresent song that furnishes the collective household of mankind. So present, it's almost possible to miss, and It has the quality of a good story photograph:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTVjnBo96Ug
'(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay was a track about a migrant from 'The Great Migration' whose dreams turned out to be empty - watching others anonymously float by. 'Try a little tenderness' talks of an overworked lady - weary and wearing a shaggy dress... both tracks adding fine melody and passionate support to quite desperate moments, both tracks laden with description and compassion. Today the track from this lens test 'Shake' might evoque a 'Blues Brothers' of ultra abandon gratuitous or a fleet of sexual innuendo. For Otis, the 'Shake' is a collective mood of shared dancing and the key is the question "Do you feel alright?". Like Jimmy Smith, Otis could be a preacher within music. Otis wanted the music to make everyone feel 'fine', refusing to leave people from his list. His thrilling energy is illustrated here through the lifeforce of a waterfall.
Shot with a vintage 35mm Takumar f2 on a Pentax K3
AJM 04.04.21
Verraco De Las Cogotas
A verraco of a pig in a fine state of preservation. The elements visible are typical of this late megalithic form, which can vary between species, size and gender within a constraint of upright and unthreatening.
With verrcos, there is an attention to the keys of living 'being', with the keys that suggest existence itemised to include horns, nostrils, eyes, ears, sexual organ, tail and anus - all rendered with equal measure of line and importance, and without a sense of artistic liberty, whim, flamboyance or exaggeration.
Unlike symbolic, heroic and realist sculptures, and indeed unlike many native and prehistoric sculptures, verracos have eyes that do not dominate, stare or exaggerate, and they are present, but not intrusive. The eyes seem to exist without obviously looking.
It can be argued that a classic verraco such as the example pictured above) has a rounded body mass that seems to credibly hold the idea of bone, flesh, gut and cartilage. It can also be argued that there is a sense of artificial armature in some examples (see below), and it is at least possible that large frame animals of weave and stretched-pelt existed outside of the granite stone verraco, with the verraco craftsmen trying to log real-life animals whilst being biased by the artificial examples already integrated into their culture. Here, workshops that made both stone and wicker-and-stretch examples may see bias slipping into form - especially if the workshop is behind walls. Here, it may also be the case that weave and stretched 'skin' 'verracos existed in other territories, with this area of Iberia being the one that turned the culture into stone.
Despite this potential source of deviation in line, the objective of the master carvers seems to have been to log the elements associated with real life, principally a list of identification details and a sense of round body mass.
It is often argued that there is movement in Palaeolithic rock art, movement and life force. Whilst some verracos have suggestions of slight movement - for example third animated legs and lines of steamy breath from nostrils (see below), verracos contrast greatly with the Palaeolithic dynamic of captured life-force, instead offering a stillness, and a static presence. They do not seem to project power: the power of an animal-god or spirit; the power from a past or future, the power of a clan or individual. They just stand. They are always standing and never seem to be eating, or grazing. They are alive and perhaps it might best be said that they are ruminating, or taking a standing rest.
In summary, 'life' is visible everywhere in a verraco, through carefully crafted details and a global form of rounded body mass, but it is not a threatening or dynamic life. The eyes are passive eyes, and the legs are not sprung with the fluctuations of plosive, edgy or potentially dangerous lifeforce.
I would argue that an explanation of the verracos would need to explain these qualities.
AJM 16.11.21
Details of everyday life,
Praktica MTL3
Asahi Pentax Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 35mm f3.5
Agfaphoto APX 100 shot at ISO 400
Compard R09 One Shot 1+90 semi-stand development 120min at 18-19°C
Agitation 1min + gently at 45 and 90 min
At the other end of the same meander in the Thames is Vauxhall bridge which is also the landmark to head for if you want to visit the Tate's main gallery - The Tate Britain. To the side of Vauxhall bridge are wooden posts - a little more wrinkled than the above river posts, but not so different. The largest is 30cm in diameter and they are from 6,500 ybp so very early neolithic. As with the above timbers, they are only exposed at very low tide.
600m up river from these timbers can be found another prehistoric site from 3,500 ybp - so bronze age. Rather than a jetty, these three metre wide remains may be of a first bridge to cross the Thames.
The above bridge is perhaps the last built to cross the Thames in central London. Designed by Norman Foster, 'The Millennium Bridge' is like early London bridges in that it is more suited for people and animals than heavy vehicles.
AJ
All of these verracos have been collected for their ability to display signatures of damage. Even seemingly 'clean' veraccos, when looked at in detail, often have stigmat. Some legs are repaired so a little deconstruction is required to see their impact themes.
The softening of deep time can cause a damage that requires the viewer to 'sharpen' details in his or hers minds eye. Luckily there are protected examples (below top) that seem to have evaded the worst of chemical erosion - perhaps saved by a covering of a dry sandy soil?
Aside the erosion from standard rain and post industrial acid rain, it is indubitable that there have been deteriorations from impacts, with far more impacts concentrated to the head and legs than to the back and rump.
Granite is a singularly tough stone to carve - even with iron tools - and granite is dense. It has mass. It has weight. Strong heavy stones with crystalline structure are sculpted by thump - almost ground away with repeat heavy impact and, although there are many exceptions, granite tends not to sheer, as the generally uniform crystals stop cracks from spreading.
The verraco zone of Iberia is not the only iron age society to work with granite, with Egypt providing mixed and refined examples. Also, some chalcolithic 'statue menhirs' - for example of the Lacaune group (Peyro Levado) - provide examples of carved granite with now fading line detailing, so the medium is difficult, but was known from before the Verraco period Iron Age.
Sheering or splitting granite is possible, and for this you tend to see lines of wedges chiselled into the rock, prior to the pounding of fitting metal wedges (see the third image below). I have not seen a verraco with just such sheer split damage and residual wedge marks, just percussive attritional marks from a repeat action.
We must suppose that any attempt to destroy the verraco as a symbol of power would result in a vandalism and impact from above-down, as forms of sledge-hammer power down, evidence of which seems to be clearly missing, with verraco tops far cleaner than pedestals and hooves.
Children impacting verracos around the head and lower leg is also not a credible avenue of explanation. In conclusion, even if occasional damage came from invading Romans, Medieval authorities and enacting children, it would appear that the mass of lower leg and head damage needs a dedicated explanation.
Conquering ideologies could be very capable destroyers of Iron age statues, and decapitation, and sadly 'mutilations' of stone warriors by invading Romans are easy to see in todays collections. These examples may not have been in granite, but if any post verraco-age ruler wanted to ablate a cultural item of significance, they could surely have found strategies far more efficient than the repeated pounding of the feet and face areas.
Finding a explanation for the percussive damage witnessed in many examples will turn a light onto a hypothesis regarding their cultural importance and function, and may also help explain why Romans did not target them for destruction.
Returning to the central image of large cups carved into the back of a subset of examples: likewise, finding an explanation as to why it was deemed valid to carve and 'degrade' just such pits, in a seemingly random way is required. Casual pits as apposed to integrated offering cups measured into the form with harmony. The large cups scattered here are also executed without formality of size, number or distribution. Explaining these elements seems to be important in understanding the phenomena of veraccos.
Many of the featured examples are from museums in Carceres and Avila.
AJM 15.11.21
Left : a pot in the shape of a cow, perhaps simply illustrating the common joy in seeing loved livestock appear in everyday objects. It would be pleasant to think that the verracos were likewise simply decorative elements to follow pastoral life in croft, castro and village, but this would neither explain the back pits or the patterns of damage. Also, granite is not clay, and the great amount of time spent carving even the smallest verraco might seem excessive for just such an 'ornamentation' to have lasted for between 4 and 500 years without phasing into a symbol of power. Finding a function for verracos that enhances the lives of the people who take the time to first make or 'buy' them, and then damage some, but not all of them them - again and again and again, seems to be a desired solution.
The central image is from a find I posted in August 2020 of cups integrated into the pedestal of a clapper bridge aside the hamlet of Fariza in the Sayago region (see below for a more detailed post). The bridge is down river from a second site seen aside the village of Argañín. This site (also posted below) is thought to be from the first ages of metal, so from prior to the ages of the verraco. If the function of the cups can be understood, then it might be possible to conject that it was logical and appropriate to add the old ways of cup usage to the new ways of verracos.
The right-hand image was taken outside of the walls of the castro of Yaca de Yeltes. We see a field of planted stones. The area stops and starts and does not seem to be a residue of a general fortification. A verraco was found in soil between the stones. Understanding how these rough standing stones might have related to verracos is of interest.
When you look for the original find locations of currently known examples, blur often creeps in, as verracos were regularly taken to local villages squares, used as building materials and associated with burial. Selected persons who die after spending a life working and living around verracos would surely be respected with the gift idea of being buried next to an example, and the juxtaposition of grave and verraco may not reveal how the form originally energised peoples and cultures in their everyday. Egypt saw household objects as grave goods and a dedicated funeral statue of a loved pastoral animal next to a grave with multiple bashes to the hoof and nose area seems like a topsy-turvy idea.
AJM 18.11.21
Takumar 28mm 3.5 I don't know the difference between these two lenses but I've had the larger one for a while now and it takes great pics so I couldn't pass up the smaller compact version. Now I have two. Shot with my Sony A6000 and Takumar 55mm 1.8 SMC lens.