Celtiberian letter found on spindle whorl

An engraved symbol found on a 1st century B.C. spindle whorl is one of the earliest examples of alphabetic writing in the northern Iberian peninsula. The spindle whorl, a donut-shaped counterweight for a spinning spindle, was discovered during the 2017 excavation at the Iron Age La Peña del Castro site near La Ercina in northwestern Spain’s León Province.

There is evidence of occupation at the La Peña del Castro site in phases starting from the 10th century B.C. until the Roman era, with its largest extent of area and population between the 6th-3rd century B.C. and the 2nd-1st century B.C. The village was burned and abandoned in the 1st century B.C.

The 2017 excavated uncovered a circular structure archaeologists identified as a private warehouse. Artifacts found inside the warehouse include a basket made of bark containing a set of seeds, remains of bovine legs likely in the process of being cured and several tools of agricultural or artisanal use. Among the artisanal tools were three perforated discs made of talc believed to be spindle whorls.

After cleaning, the pieces revealed decorations of dots and radial lines on two of them and a small symbol consisting of two incised lines forming an acute angle like a letter V on the third. The engraving of the symbol is precise and accurate, with the vertices of the lines at the same distance from the edge. The engraver made a light perforation at each point of the vertices using a plate drill, several of which have been found at the site. The strokes then joined the perforations.

The symbol bears no relation to the decorations on the other spindle whorls or to any other artifacts found at the site. It has, however, been documented in graffiti from the Vaccean culture, a Celtic people related to the Celtiberians who occupied parts of León from the 4th century B.C. well into the Roman imperial era. While they did not use writing systems, they did adopt the Celtiberian alphabet with a smattering of Latin characters used to spell the indigenous language.

Analysis of the dark grey talc with honey talc veining used to make the engraved spindle whorl found a match for the talc extracted from the mines of Puebla de Lillo about 25 miles north of La Peña del Castro from the 2nd century B.C. Because the material was local, it was likely engraved at the site rather than introduced through trade.

This would indicate that, although we do not have any texts from the Iron Age in the Cantabrian area, there was a population in this settlement that had the knowledge to carry out this practice . In this regard, we must consider the possibility that there could have been a foreign population in the settlement.

This study has been published in the journal Paleohispánica and can be read in this pdf.

* This article was originally published here