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Ibercalafell

Age: Època Antiga
Web page: http://www.ibercalafell.org.es/
Check our activities at the Agenda.

Ibercalafell is the group that probably makes best diffusion of historical re-enactment. They perform different daily life activities in an Iberian village such as funeral rituals, commercial exchanges, social relations and hierarchy, among others.

 

Towards 1000 BC, tribes from Middle Europe with knowledge of iron metallurgy settled all along the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, including current Catalonia. Their knowledge and cultural practices were soon adopted by native inhabitants who, culturally speaking, still lived in the Bronze Age. Newcomers not only brought with them their Indo-European language and iron culture, but they also introduced new burial ceremonials, namely cremation and placing ashes in pottery urns. This is why these people are known as "Fields of Urns People".

 

Bronze was gradually substituted for iron in tools and weapons manufacturing, and the use of bronze was restricted to making ornamental objects and surgical instruments. Further changes, however had to take place for the Iberian culture to flourish. Certainly, Phoenician, Etruscan and Greek traders made a great contribution to it by establishing trading centres and opening up new commercial routes, which facilitated import of new cultural elements such as the alphabet, the deed or the ceramic turn. Native populations lived a process of "acculturation" which culminated with the birth of a clearly more advanced way of living: the Iberian culture. It spread from current occidental Andalusia and Murcia, northwards to Montpellier in current French department of Herault.

 

In VI Century AC, the Iberian culture was fully established and survived until the roman invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (centuries II-I BC).

 

Calafell was an Iberian village inhabited by the cossetan or cessetan tribe (name coming from Cesse or Kesse, identified with current Tarragona). The group Ibercalafell is one of the most veteran groups attending Tarraco Viva Roman Festival. Due to their high quality performances, the group has often been invited to many other re-enactment events. In 2007 Ibercalafell took part in Trimvirat Mediterrani enacting the burial of an Iberian chief.

 

This re-enactment group has always been linked to an archaeological site at the Iberian citadel of Calafell, a remarkable cultural equipment where 20 years of excavations have allowed an in situ reconstruction of the ancient village. Thorough scientific research has allowed restoration of walls, streets and homes as they were in the citadel around 200 BC. More information can be found at www.didpatri.net, a web page of the Research and Didactic Innovation Group at the University of Barcelona, as well as at www.polemos.org, a site devoted to battlefield archaeology and musemisation.

 

A visit to the citadel is a journey back in time that allows visitors to learn customs and fundamental traits of Iberian culture. A place devised to discover and relive history through the world of archaeology.