Copper and Cowboys

A trip over to the west of Almeria province took us first to Los Millares, a well fortified Chalcolithic site some 5.5 ka old. After seeing Bronze and Iron age forts in the UK, and the hut circles on Dartmoor,  it was fascinating to see one where there were not only foundations of the huts and workshops but also of the stone and mud walls that surrounded them. They must have felt the need to protect themselves from the surrounding, presumably less advanced, hunter gatherers or farmers to whom they sold their copper arrowheads and other implements.

A reconstructed area helped a good deal with visualising what the original might have been like.

Next stop was Las Salinas, west of Tabernas. The travertine deposits here are fascinating, and the badland setting something really unusual in Europe. At first glance it looked as though there were beds of lilac–hued rocks ourtcopping across the hillsides but drawing closer we found they were carpeted with small annual plants with lilac flowers and glaucous leaves that seemed to be some sort of crucifer. They covered acres of the erosion gullied hillside. After the wet winter there was a lot of salt efflorescing on the ground surface and, very unusually, the ramblas were muddy and even running with water in places!

The Rambla de la Sierra just west of Tabernas is a superb field stop though sadly the cowboy on horseback at the entrance to the track wasn’t on duty today.  Two ‘sets’ of sediments date from the Tortonian-Serrevallian and then from the Messinian. The former are continental and separated from the latter marine sediments by an angular unconformity. Faults and channels can be seen in 3D as the rambla meanders which make this a great place for visualising the ancient landscape.


After a short excursion to see the Plataforma Solar the troops were howling for a caffeine fix (not to mention a cake fix... Colin and Annie...) and we found a pair of cafés – we’d been to the further one before but went to the nearer one which seemed to be aimed at rock music and Harley Davidson fans, rearranged the furniture to sit in a group in the sun and relaxed before heading back to Turre. ... well some did!  Jan and I, with passenger Gill in tow (sorry Gill - no choice!), headed out into the campo to see if we could identify the best route to tomorrow’s first stop. Sadly, although we recognised irrigation hydrants we failed to find the site we had been to before – though the roads seemed much better graded than 5 years before! A bit of exploration on Google Earth that evening pinpointed the Lat and Long which duly went into the satnav for Emily to have a think about overnight.