Southern echoes? Stone figurines in the Iberian Northwest

Abstract

Although some sculptures associated with megalithics burial mounds were previously known, the discovery in 1980 of a large number of figures in the passage-grave of Cova da Moura (A Coruña) opened up new perspectives on the movable art linked to these funerary constructions. Subsequent findings in other tombs, generally with passage, raised to about a hundred the number of these images, usually made on boulders little or non-modified by pecking, incision or polish. These figures –sometimes arranged in a row- have usually been recovered in the outer area of access to the orthostatic construction. Their precise chronology and parallels have been the subject of discussion since the first discoveries: a combination of regional traditions and influences from the peninsular south could explain the peculiar features of these cult objects, whose chronology could go back to the middle of the 4th millennium BC and extend to at least the beginnings of the 3rd.