Settlement patterns in the central and southeastern area of Iberian peninsula
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 19/09/2020

Full title: Settlement patterns in the central and southeastern area of Iberian peninsula: a landscape approach in a evolutionary framework 

The transition to agriculture is a key period of Humanity’s History, providing unresolved puzzles with important implications for subsequent periods. Evolution of first agricultural societies, which presents phases of expansion and cultural homogeneity followed by periods of dispersion and diversity, is an issue of interest. This phenomenon is not exclusive of early stages of Neolithic. During the third millennium BC, several so-called ‘complex’ societies emerged along the Iberian Peninsula. Such societies presented some features like: Strong demographic growth and large population aggregations, monumental construction, extension of ideo-technic elements and specialized crafts, starting with the impreso-cardial and finishing in posterior chronologies with the bell-beaker, both showing parallels with the ones in the Italic peninsula and Sicily. We can’t forget either the presence of exotic raw materials like ivory from Syria (which will probably arrive Iberia through Sicily) and amber (some coming from Sicily itself, pointing to long-range exchange networks and potential parallels between both regions). Nevertheless, by the end of that millennium, the cultural landscape looks like fragmented and regionalized, all together with a economical and spatial re-organization, setting the basis for the Bronze Age. All this information suggests that there are hints of cycles of significant growth and dispersal beginning with the earliest Neolithic societies. In this paper, we study the settlement patterns and the exchange of raw materials from a diachronic perspective from Neolithic to Bronze Age, in the central and southeastern area of the Iberian Peninsula, in order to better understand the evolution and the social meaning of cultural behaviour of this communities and their relationships with the landscape and resources. 

Author(s): Escriba Ruiz, Ma Pilar - Jimenez-Puerto, Joaquin R. - Bernabeu Auban, Joan - Orozco-Kohler, Teresa (Universitat de Valencia)