Historiography and taurodermic methodology: new considerations about its symbolism in the Protohistory of the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

In this article we aim to revise and to put in question some aspects which are taking root between the researchers who from different points of view have approached to the study of the “bull-hide shaped” or “Cypriot ingot shaped” of the Iberian protohistory. In this way, the first necessary step is to carry out a historiographic revision of the most remarkable findings which have conditioned the different interpretations about the shape of these objects and the starting point of the symbolic proposals about them. Secondly, we try to give more coherence to the methodology published by other authors to identify them, because it does not enough accurate to all the supports in which we can find its representation. After bringing up to date the list of forms, origins and cronologies of them, we try to set an approach of the terminological and symbolic problems about its shape that have not been well-studied until the present. Finally, from such reviews and reflections published in these lines we want to continue the debate with new questions about this type of objects.