Carambolo Treasure

Carambolo Treasure
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By m.p. - Jan 23, 2012 - 4:09 PM
A treasure trove of ancient gold jewellery from Sevilla’s past is now on permanent display at the city’s Archaeological Museum, after years of being locked up for safety in a bank safe which it had only left for public viewing on five occasions since its discovery.

The Carambolo Treasure now on display - EFE

The collection is known as the Carambolo Treasure, 21 elaborately worked pieces fashioned from 24-carat gold which were discovered by chance along with other artefacts during work in 1958 to renovate a building on a hill in Camas, on the outskirts of Sevilla on the right hand bank of the Guadalquivir River. A workman spotted the first piece, a wide, golden bracelet lying semi-uncovered at the site at the top of the hill. He and his colleagues continued searching, and came across an oval, earthenware structure containing ceramics and numerous animal bones, with another 20 pieces of golden jewellery.

The 16 rectangular plates, two breast pieces, a necklace and two bracelets together weigh almost three kilos. They were fashioned by skilled goldsmiths thousands of years ago and are remarkably well preserved, given their age, although one of the pieces was snapped in two by one of the workmen when he attempted to prove that it was copper. They were originally thought to be linked to the Tartessos civilisation, and that Carambolo was a Tartessian settlement, but later excavations indicate that the site was an important Phoenician sanctuary, dedicated to Astarte and Baal. A small bronze statue of Astarte which was unearthed at Carambolo also forms part of the exhibition. It’s thought that the gold pieces may have been used in some form of ritual while sacrificing beasts. The breast pieces, in the shape of a stretched out bull’s hide, would have been placed on the animal’s forehead and the plates on its back. The priest would wear the necklace and the bracelets.

The sacred complex is thought to date back to the 9th Century BC and was probably in use by the Phoenician merchants who had colonised Sevilla until the start of the 7th Century BC.

The 230 square metre exhibition hall which houses the collection at the museum is divided into four themed sections: the history of the treasure’s discovery, the characteristics of the Carambolo sanctuary, other river and coastal sanctuaries which have been discovered in this part of Andalucía (in Coria del Río and Lebrija), and the treasures of Ébora and Mairena del Alcor.

The main piece in the Ébora treasure is a golden diadem dating from the VII-VI Centuries BC which was found in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir.

A 7th Century BC Phoenician altar which was unearthed upriver, further down the Guadalquivir from Camas, at Coria del Río, weighing close to half a ton, has given up information on the rituals which were used all those centuries ago. The DNA evidence which has been extracted has been conserved for 2,700 years and shows that goat entrails were burnt by fires which were lit with wood from holm and cork oak. Experts are also working on extracting DNA from the skin oil which was left by the hands of the person who fashioned the clay altar.

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