The almoloya, em el argar
A University of Barcelona team mapped the borders of the iconic Bronze Age region for the first time. To do so, it was “only” to follow the ceramic.
“To understand the consolidation of the first states in prehistory, it is essential to analyze how its borders were created and maintained,” he explains to Roberto Risch, professor of the prehistory department at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and coordinator of a new study that makes us know the boundaries of the first state of the Iberian Peninsula.
El argar dates from about 4,000 years ago from the Bronze Age, and finally the researchers were capable, through the analysis of ceramic production and circulation in the border zone in northern Murcia province, to better understand the limits of this state.
Why is this important? Borders give many clues about the political and social organization of ancient cities.
The new, published this Sunday in Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, identified the existence of active exchange and negotiation zones. The political relationship can be perceived in the ceramics itself that was exchanged there.
“These containers were not only objects of everyday life, but reflected the structure of the economic and political networks of the time,” explains the researcher.
The study even revealed the existence of a ceramic distribution network at the regional scaleprobably controlled by the central villages of El Argar.
In the northern part of the studied territory, a multitude of small pottery workshops that used local clays were identified. “This sharp difference suggests that the ECONOMIC SYSTEMS UNDER COMPLETE DIFFERENT COMMUNITIES“Explains another researcher, Moreno Gil.
“El Argar’s preeminence was not limited to control of strategic resources such as metals, but also extended to everyday objects of use such as ceramics,” concludes Gil.
The areas of ceramic production and circulation were thus, for the first time, mapped by the team.
Carla Garrido García, researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, says this work “shows that ceramic analysis is a fundamental tool To understand economic exchanges, social relations and the configuration of border spaces in prehistory. ”
