THE BRACELET OF TOÉN: A CASE STUDY OF THE LATE BRONZE AGE IN THE ATLANTIC AREA

Abstract

in the autumn of 1932, a local farmer from the parish of Santa María de Toén (Ourense), while working on a farm, found a pre-Roman gold bracelet under a stone. This piece would be described, photographed and studied in several publications by ethnographers and historians specializing in Prehistory of the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, Florentino López Cuevillas and Fermín Bouza-Brey. Both authors agree that the bracelet is related to the Central European goldsmithery of the Hallstatt Culture of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. Since 1934 it has been lost track of and is currently unaccounted for.
The present work tries to make a reliable reconstruction of the finding of the bracelet, as well as to glimpse in which hands it ended up and which was its end. In addition, it is intended to solve the historiographic misunderstanding that confuses it in several works with the Ourense bracelet, discovered in 1921 and belonging to the Blanco-Cicerón collection (Provincial Museum of Lugo). Finally, a revision of its chronological ascription will also be made, associating the piece with the Villena-Estremoz type goldsmithery, produced in local workshops in the south of the Iberian Peninsula during the Final Bronze Age (1300/1200 B.C. - 700 B.C.).