The roughly 24-inch-long (60 centimeters) chariot was designed with a flat, table-like top that people would have used as a surface for burning incense as a divine offering, according to a translated statement.
Archaeologists unearthed part of the chariot, including two legs and two wheels, at an archaeological site called Casas del Turuñuelo (Spanish for "Houses of Turuñuelo") in Spain's Badajoz province, close to the border with Portugal. The two legs look like two people holding up the table part of the chariot.
A face on the chariot appears to be an unusual fusion of a gorgon and Achelous, a river god in Greek mythology who could turn into a bull. (Image credit: Construyendo Tarteso Project )Archaeologists have previously discovered similar chariots made by the Etruscans, a pre-Roman people who lived in Italy from about 900 to 100 B.C. However, the newfound one is the first known chariot to feature a gorgon-Achelous face mashup, and the first of its kind to be found in the Iberian Peninsula, according to Pulido, who is also a doctoral student at the Autonomous University of Madrid studying ancient Mediterranean imports throughout the Iberian Peninsula.
Both of the short sides of the chariot feature a griffin, a mythical creature associated with safeguarding. (Image credit: Construyendo Tarteso Project )The chariot was found in a layer suggesting it was discarded around the end of the fifth century B.C., though the design of the gorgon-Achelou face's iconography indicates that it could have been made as early as the sixth century B.C.
The humanlike figures on the chariot are clothed, which is unusual because other Etruscan-crafted bronze figures are naked. (Image credit: Construyendo Tarteso Project)An enigmatic people
Each of the 14 sites holds the remains of burnt buildings that were subsequently filled in with soil and fragmented objects, Pulido said. The recently discovered chariot had been intentionally broken — it has no other damage besides being halved — and included in the debris.
Construyendo Tarteso Project Construyendo Tarteso ProjectRelated storiesThe current leading theory regarding these ruins is that, for some unknown reason and around the same time, the inhabitants of these centers burned down their buildings, filled them in and then abandoned the sites. The burning and filling seem to have been too intentional for it to have happened in the context of an enemy attack, according to Pulido. "Instead, they may have formed part of a carefully planned ritual of closure, a symbolic farewell to buildings that were intentionally decommissioned," she said.
See if you know what these mysterious artifacts are with our archaeological fragments quiz!
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