This paper presents regional sequences of production, consumption and social relations in southern Spain from the beginning of the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age (c. 5600–1550 BC). The regions studied are southeast Spain, Valencia, the southern Meseta and central/western Andalucia. The details presented for each region and period vary in quality but show how much our knowledge of the archaeological record of southern Spain has changed during the last four decades. Among the surprises are the rapidity of agricultural adoption, the emergence of regional centres of aggregated population in enclosed/fortified settlements of up to 400 hectares in the fourth and third millennia BC, the use of copper objects as instruments of production, rather than as items with a purely symbolic or ‘prestige’ value, large-scale copper production in western Andalucia in the third millennium BC (as opposed to the usual domestic production model), and the inference of societies based on relations of class.

Producing Inequalities: Regional Sequences in Later Prehistoric Southern Spain

The smelting quarter of Valencina de la Concepción (Seville, Spain) : the specialised copper industry in a political centre of the Guadalquivir Valley during the Third millennium BC (2750-2500 BC)

In this book, Katina Lillios provides an up-to-date synthesis of the rich histories of the peoples who lived on the Iberian Peninsula between 1,400,000 (the Paleolithic) and 3,500 years ago (the Bronze Age) as revealed in their art, burials, tools, and monuments. She highlights the exciting new discoveries on the Peninsula, including the evidence for some of the earliest hominins in Europe, Neanderthal art, interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans, and relationships to peoples living in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Western Europe. This is the first book to relate the ancient history of the Peninsula to broader debates in anthropology and archaeology. Amply illustrated and written in an accessible style, it will be of interest to archaeologists and students of prehistoric Spain and Portugal.

The Archaeology of the Iberian Peninsula: From the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age

During the past few decades, evidence for the ancient smelting of copper has been discovered in areas isolated from one another. In most of them, the beginning of metallurgy had no substantial social and cultural consequences. Accordingly, the diffusionist theory (assuming the existence of a single homeland for metallurgy and its central importance in cultural development) has been replaced by a localizationist theory, in which the emergence of metallurgy is simply a continuation of the working of native copper. But neither of these theories is able either to correlate similarities observed among disparate Bronze Age civilizations or to explain the status of the smelter as civilizing hero in ancient mythologies. The problem, I argue, arises because previous scholars did not distinguish properly between two modes of copper production: crucible metallurgy and furnace smelting. According to the localizationist theory, crucible metallurgy appears as a spontaneous extension of the melting of native copper but does not result in any substantial cultural change, whereas the general principles of a diffusionist theory would regard the emergence of furnace metallurgy as a unique event that spread rapidly and spurred on vast cultural changes (if diffusionists had ever actually understood the difference between the two production methods). I propose instead a synthetic theory in which the spread of furnace metallurgy―which was fundamentally different from crucible metallurgy and depended on complex technical knowledge―from the southern Levant generated a wide network linking Bronze Age societies. This has important implications for our understanding of the international network of exchanges in technology, artifacts, and ideas during the Bronze Age.

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From Metallurgy to Bronze Age Civilizations: The Synthetic Theory

Emerging Complexity. The Later Prehistory of South-east Spain, Iberia and the West Mediterranean

A new research project has revealed a fully specialised copper industry in south-west Iberia at the beginning of the third millennium BC. The settlement is rife with hierarchy: on the slopes of the hill copper-workers smelt and cast and have their own residential zone, while an incipient aristocracy occupies a small fortification at the summit and commands all the imports and means of transport. The author sees this social system as endemic to the new industry.

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F. Nocete

Papers

The first specialised copper industry in the Iberian peninsula: Cabezo Juré (2900-2200 BC)