Abstract
This doctoral thesis is dedicated to the study of the dynamics of settlement, the organization of production and the expressions of economic and political power that characterised the Meseta Sur and Levantine region of the Iberian Peninsula during the Early and Middle Bronze Age (c. 2200-1550 cal BCE).The objective is to facilitate, through a macrospatial and holistic perspective, an understanding of the processes of change and rupture that occurred in the Iberian Peninsula between the Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age, considering a unitary geographical framework in an area where "culturalist" archaeology had created borders based on idealistic criteria rather than on archaeological materiality.
The methodological approach is inspired by the "theory of social practices and productions", and the objective is to analyse the historical forms of social distance, both economic (social dissymmetry) and sexual (sexual differentiation).
To achieve these objectives, 1440 Bronze Age settlement have been located and inventoried in a total area of 117.000 km2. The creation of a specific database, bibliographic compilation, access to the archaeological charts of the autonomous communities, surveys using GPS instrumentation and drone, and finally the creation of a GIS have allowed the creation of a network of connections between the geospatial data and the archaeological materials analysed.
Chapter 1 is dedicated to the definition of the research objectives, the chronological and geographical framework examined, and the interpretive methodologies used: structure of the database, bibliographic and archival sources consulted, the problems and the variables taken into consideration, the survey methods, and the geospatial analysis performed with the QGIS software.
Chapter 2 addresses the dynamics of the formation of social spaces, analysing the density of settlement, settlement patterns, extension and location of the settlements, fortifications, the unevenness between the hilltop settlements and the surrounding areas, the anthropic structures. After these analyses, it could be confirmed that the presence of hilltop settlements (both fortified and without fortifications) and, more generally, the protection of social space through the construction of stone fortifications constitutes an marked discontinuity with the settlement patterns of the Chalcolithic, and indicates growing social tension and an incipient social hierarchy.
Chapter 3 analyses the forms of social production and contextualizes them in each settlement pattern: hunting and warfare (flint, bone and copper arrowheads), agriculture (flint sickle teeth, underground silos, silos of masonry, large ceramic containers and grinding stones for the production of flour), the processing of dairy products ("queseras"), weaving (loom weights), spinning (fusayolas), ivory work (raw material, preforms and finished products) , and metallurgy (ore, slags, crucibles, foundry moulds).
Chapter 4 relates the locations and forms of social spaces with the management and control of production, analysing the socio-political dynamics that may have generated the expressions of power and the climate of tension that characterized the northern territories of El Argar during the Bronze Age.
| Date of Award | 12 Feb 2021 |
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| Original language | Spanish |
| Supervisor | Roberto Risch (Director) |