Warriors, Wolves, and Women

In the summer of 1975 a Spanish gypsy named Virgilio Romero Moreno visited the museum in Jaén, 250 miles south of Madrid, and offered to sell several limestone sculptures. After some negotiation, the museum bought the pieces, which had recently been dug up near the village of Porcuna in the hilly countryside of Andalusia. That site, archaeologists would soon learn, was the repository of dozens of stone carvings and hundreds of sculptural fragments dating to the second half of the fifth century B.C.—the most impressive collection of ancient 024 Iberian statues ever found. In one highly dramatic carving, a […]