The Empowerment of Imagery: Stone Warriors in the Borders

Abstract

This article explores the potential contribution of a biographical, phenomenological and performative approach to the study of material images in the past through a particular study case: the warrior statues from the so-called ‘Castro culture’ in northwestern Iberia. The aim is to provide a different way of thinking, as opposed to the traditional conceptions that have prevailed in archaeological research, taking into account what material forms enable the construction of the social at a micro-scale level. To this end, the author analyses how these statues actively build their own meaning and sense in the socio-material contexts where they belong; and how, in this process, their materiality partakes in the creation and maintenance of indigenous identity and sociality.