Analysing Social Change through Domestic and Public Spaces
An Approach from Northwest Iberia (Ninth–First Century BC)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jma.25524Keywords:
Built space, household archaeology, Iron Age Europe, northwest Iberia, social complexityAbstract
This paper presents a study of Iron Age (IA) societies through the analysis of architecture and built space. The approach is focused on a small area in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, and constructs a small-scale narrative that seeks to identify different social dynamics concerning the onset, development and decline of the fortified habitat (between the ninth and first centuries BC). Three main spheres of human habitation are assessed: the environment of the household, the construction of collective and non-domestic buildings and the development of settlement planning. The main characteristics of these spheres are discussed and summarised, and they are understood as part of the same dynamic that reflects how the IA communities of northwest Iberia were structured. The main objective of the paper is to employ this methodology to study social dynamics at different scales and thus build a multi-scale historical and archaeological narrative about the development of heterogeneous processes in IA societies.
References
Álvarez González, L.F. López González, M. Fernández-Götz and M.V. García Quintela 2018 Reconsidering urbanisation in Late Iron Age north-western Iberia: the oppidum of San Cibrán de Las (Galicia, Spain). Praehistorische Zeitschrift 92: 354-69. https://doi.org/10.1515/pz-2017-0017
Ames, K. 2010 On the evolution of the human capacity for inequality and/or egalitarianism. In T.D. Price and G. Feinman (eds.), Pathways to Power: New Perspectives on the Emergence of Social Inequality, 15-45. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6300-0_2
Ames, K., and C. Grier 2020 Inequality on the Pacific northwest coast of North America measured by house-floor area
and storage capacity. Antiquity 94 (376): 1042-59. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.128
Arkush, E., and H.C. Ikehara 2019 Pucarani: defensive monumentality and political leadership in the late pre-Columbian Andes. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 53: 66-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2018.11.002
Assmann, J. 2011 Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance and Political Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511996306
Ayán-Vila, X. 2012 Casa, familia y comunidad en la edad del hierro del Noroeste. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela.
Ayán-Vila, X., and C. Parcero-Oubiña 2009 Almacenamiento, unidades domésticas y comunidades en el Noroeste prerromano. In R.G. Huerta and D.R. González (eds.), Sistemas de Almacenamiento entre los Pueblos Prerromanos Peninsulares, 367-422. Cuenca, Spain: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha.
Beck, R.A. 2007 The Durable House: House Society Models in Archaeology. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Belarte, M.C. 2010 La casa ibèrica: de la construcció a l’ús de l’espai. Barcelona: Societat Catalana d’Arqueología.
Bergson, H. 1998 [1907] Creative Evolution. New York: Dover.
Blanco-González, A. 2011 From huts to ‘the house’: the shift in perceiving home between the Bronze Age and the early Iron Age in central Iberia (Spain). Oxford Journal of Archaeology 30 (4): 393-410. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0092.2011.00373.x
Blanton, R. 1994 Houses and Households: A Comparative Study. New York: Plenum. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0990-9
Blanton, R., and L. Fargher 2011 The collective logic of pre-modern societies. World Archaeology 43: 505-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2011.607722
Bourdieu, P. 1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1992 The Logic of Practice. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Cano Pan, J.A. 2012 Punta de Muros: un poblado fortificado de finales de la Edad de Bronce. A Coruña, Spain: Arqueoloxía do Noroeste.
Carsten, J., and S. Hugh-Jones 1995 About the House: Lévi-Strauss and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511607653
Clastres, P. 1978 La Sociedad contra el Estado. Barcelona: Monte Ávila.
———. 1981 Investigaciones en antropología política. Barcelona: Gedisa.
———. 1989 Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology. Princeton, New Jersey: Zone Books.
Cohen, A.P. 1985 The Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Tavistock Publications. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203323373
Comendador Rey, B. 1999 Cambios en la escala de la producción metalúrgica durante las fases finales de la Edad del Bronce en el noroeste peninsular. Revista de Guimarâes. Volume especial – Actas do Congresso de Proto-História Europeia, 1999, II: 515-37.
Cowgill, G.L. 2004 Origins as development of urbanism: archaeological perspectives. Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 525-49. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093248
Cunliffe, B. 1999a The Ancient Celts. New York: Penguin Books.
———. 1999b Atlantic sea-ways. Revista de Guimarâes. Volume especial – Actas do Congresso de Proto-História Europeia, 1999 I: 93-105.
Cutting, M. 2006 More than one way to study a building: approaches to prehistoric household and settlement space. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 25: 225-46. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0092.2006.00259.x
Demoule, J.P. 1999 Chronologie et société dans les nécropoles celtiques de la culture Aisne-Marne du VIe au IIIe siècle avant notre ère. Amiens: Société archéologique de Picardie.
Dietler, M. 2010 Archaeologies of Colonialism: Consumption, Entanglement, and Violence in Ancient Mediterranean France. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520947948
Dietler, M., C. López-Ruiz, A. Kohn, A. Moya i Garra and A. Rivalan 2008 Les maisons à cour des IIIe-IIe s. av. J.-C. à Lattes: émergence d’une différenciation dans l’habitat indigène. Gallia 65: 111-22. https://doi.org/10.3406/galia.2008.3335
Ember, M. 1973 An archaeological indicator of matrilocal versus patrilocal residence. American Antiquity 38: 177-82. https://doi.org/10.2307/279363
Ensor, B. 2013 The Archaeology of Kinship. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Feinman, G. 2016 Variation and change in archaic states: ritual as a mechanism of sociopolitical integration. In J.M. Murphy (ed.), Ritual and Archaic States, 1-22. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813062785.003.0001
Fernández-Götz, M. 2014 Reassessing the oppida: the role of power and religion. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 33: 379-94. https://doi.org/10.1111/ojoa.12043
———. 2017 Urbanization in Iron Age Europe: trajectories, patterns and social dynamics. Journal of Archaeological Research 26: 117-62. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-017-9107-1
Fernández-Götz, M., and D. Krausse 2013 Rethinking early Iron Age urbanisation in central Europe: the Heuneburg site and its archaeological environment. Antiquity 87(336): 473-87. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00049073
———. 2016 Eurasia at the Dawn of History: Urbanization and Social Change. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316550328
Fisher, K.D., and A.M.T. Creekmore 2014 Making ancient cities: new perspectives on the production of urban places. In A.M.T. Creekmore and K.D. Fisher (eds.), Making Ancient Cities: Space and Place in Early Urban Societies, 1-31. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107110274.002
Flannery, K. 1972 The cultural evolution of civilizations. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 3: 399-426. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.es.03.110172.002151
Flannery, K., and M. Winter 1976 Analyzing household activities. In K. Flannery (ed.), The Early Mesoamerican Village, 34-44. New York: Academia Press.
Fletcher, R. 2012 Low-density, agrarian based urbanism: scale, power and ecology. In M.E. Smith (ed.), The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies, 285-300. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139022712.013
Garcia Fernandez, F.J. 2019 Rumbo a Poniente: El comercio de ánforas turdetanas en la costa atlántica de la Península Ibérica (siglos V-I a.C.). Archivo Español de Arqueología 92: 119-53. https://doi.org/10.3989/aespa.092.019.007
García Quintela, M.V. 2016 Sobre las saunas de la Edad del Hierro en la Península ibérica: novedades, tipologías e interpretaciones. Complutum 27: 109-30. https://doi.org/10.5209/CMPL.53219
Gerritsen, F. 2007 Relocating the house: social transformations in late prehistoric northern Europe. In R.A. Beck (ed.), The Durable House: House Society Models in Archaeology, 154-74. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University.
Gerritsen, F., and N. Roymans 2006 Central places and the construction of tribal identities: the case of the Late Iron Age Lower Rhine region. In C. Haselgrove (ed.), Celtes et Gaulois, l’archéologie face à l’histoire IV. Les mutations de la fin de l’age du fer, 251-66. Glux-en-Glenne, France: Centre Archéologique Européen.
Godelier, M. 1986 La producción de los grandes hombres. Poder y dominación masculina entre los Baruya de Nueva
Guinea. Madrid: Akal.
———. 2014 En el fundamento de las sociedades humanas. Lo que nos enseña la antropología. Buenos Aires: Amorrurtu.
Golosetti, R. 2014 Places of memory: hero cults and urbanisation during the first Iron Age in southeast Gaul. In M. Fernández Götz, H. Wendling and K. Winger (eds.), Paths to Complexity: Centralisation and Urbanisation in Iron Age Europe, 52-64. Oxford: Oxbow. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1dt9v.9
González Álvarez, D. 2011 De la cultura castreña al mosaico castreño: una aproximación en términos sociales a la variabilidad de las formas de poblamiento de las comunidades castreñas del Noroeste peninsular y orla cantábrica. Estrat critic 5: 213-26.
González García, F.J., C. Parcero-Oubiña and X. Ayán-Vila. 2011 Iron Age societies against the state: an account of the emergence of the Iron Age in the NW Iberian Peninsula. In X.L. Armada Pita and T. Moore (eds.), Atlantic Europe in the First Millennium BC: Crossing the Divide, 285-301. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199567959.003.0012
González Marcén, P., A. Delgado Hervás and S. Montón 2007 Interpreting Household Practices. Barcelona: Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona.
González-Ruibal, A. 2006–2007 Galaicos: poder y comunidad en el Noroeste de la Península Ibérica (1200 a.C.-50 d.C.). A Coruña, Spain: Museo Arqueolóxico e Histórico da Coruña.
———. 2012 The politics of identity: ethnicity and the economy of power in Iron Age northwest Iberia. In S. Stoddart and G. Cifani (eds.), Landscape, Ethnicity, Identity in the Archaic Mediterranean Area, 245-66. Oxford: Oxbow. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1dkcp.20
Graeber, D., and D. Wengrow 2022 The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. London: Penguin Books.
Grau-Mira, I., and J. Vives-Ferrándiz Sánchez 2018 Entre casas y comunidades: formas de organización y relación social en el área oriental de la Península Ibérica (Siglos V-I a.n.e.). In A. Rodríguez Díaz, I. Pavón Soldevilla and D.M. Duque Espino (eds.), Más allá de las casas. Familias, linajes y comunidades en la protohistoria peninsular, 73-109. Cáceres, Spain: Universidad de Extremadura.
Gutiérrez Lloret, S., and I. Grau-Mira 2013 De la estructura doméstica al espacio social. Lecturas arqueológicas del uso social del espacio. Alicante, Spain: Universidad de Alicante.
Haas, J., and W. Creamer 2001 Pueblo political organization in 1500: tinkering with diversity. In J. Haas (ed.), From Leaders to Rulers, 3-18. New York: Kluwer/Plenum.
Hill, J.D. 2006 Are we any closer to understanding how later Iron Age societies worked (or did not work)? In C. Haselgrove (ed.), Celtes et Gaulois, l’archéologie face à l’histoire IV. Les mutations de la fin de l’âge du fer, 169-79. Glux-en-Glenne, France: Centre Archéologique Européen.
Hillier, B., and J. Hanson 1984 The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597237
Hodder, I. 1991 Post-modernism, post-structuralism and post-processualism. In I. Hodder (ed.), The Meanings of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic Expression, 64-78. London: Unwin Hyman.
———. 2014 Çatalhöyük: the leopard changes its spots. A summary of recent work. Anatolian Studies 64: 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0066154614000027
Jacob, F. 1977 Evolution and tinkering. Science 196(4295): 1161-66. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.860134
Jamous, R. 1981 Honneur et baraka. Les structures sociales traditionelles dans le Rif. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.editionsmsh.15250
Johnson, A.W., and T. Earle 2000 The Evolution of Human Societies. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Joyce, R.A., and S.D. Gillespie. 2000 Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512821628
Kohler, T.A., and R. Higgins 2016 Quantifying household inequality in early Pueblo villages. Current Anthropology 57: 690-97. https://doi.org/10.1086/687982
Latour, B. 2005 Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Clarendon.
Leach, E.R. 1970 [1954] Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure. London: Athlone Press/University of London.
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1982 The Way of the Masks. London: Jonathan Cape.
———. 1966 The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lucas, G. 2012 Understanding the Archaeological Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511845772
Marcus, J. 2009 Understanding houses, compounds and neighborhoods. In L.R. Manzanilla and C. Chapdelaine (eds.), Domestic Life in Prehispanic Societies: A Study of Specialiation, Hierarchy and Ethnicity, 257-66. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11394894.20
Marín-Aguilera, B. 2018 Inhabiting domestic space: becoming different in the early Iron Age western Mediterranean. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 31: 77-100. https://doi.org/10.1558/jma.36811
Meijide Cameselle, G. 1990 Tres dataciones de C14 del Castro de A Graña (Toques, A Coruña) y su contexto arqueológico. Gallaecia 12: 111-34.
Méndez Fernández, F. 1994 La domesticación del paisaje durante la Edad del Bronce gallego. Trabajos de Prehistoria 51: 77-94. https://doi.org/10.3989/tp.1994.v51.i1.465
Moneo, T., J. Pérez and J. Vélez 2001 Un santuario de entrada ibérico en ‘El Cerro de las Cabezas’ (Valdepeñas, Ciudad Real). Complutum 12: 123-36.
Moore, T. 2017 Beyond Iron Age ‘towns’: examining oppida as examples of low-density urbanism. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 36: 287-305. https://doi.org/10.1111/ojoa.12116
Moore, T., and D. González-Álvarez 2021 Societies against the chief? Re-examining the value of ‘heterarchy’ as a concept for studying European Iron Age societies. In T.L. Thurston and M. Fernández-Götz (eds.), Power from
Below in Premodern Societies, 125-56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009042826.007
Nión-Álvarez, S. 2021 La Protohistoria en el territorio ártabro. Organización social y estructura territorial. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela.
———. 2022 The metalworker as social agent: a longue durée approach from northwestern Iberia Atlantic Façade (ninth-first centuries BCE). Cambridge Archaeological Journal 32: 489-506. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774321000615
Nión-Álvarez, S., M.G. Castro González and M.A. Rivas Nódar 2021 Una puerta a la ocupación prerromana de A Coruña: el yacimiento de Príncipe 17. SPAL – Revista de prehistoria y arqueología 30(2): 125-57. https://doi.org/10.12795/spal.2021.i30.20
Nión-Álvarez, S., and F.J. González García 2023 Social change and metalworking in the early Iron Age: an approach from North-West Iberia. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 42. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1111/ojoa.12262
Olivier, L. 2011 The Dark Abyss of Time: Archaeology and Memory. Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press.
Parcero-Oubiña, C. 2003 Looking forward in anger: social and political transformations in the Iron Age of the north-western Iberian Peninsula. European Journal of Archaeology 6: 267-99. https://doi.org/10.1179/eja.2003.6.3.267
Parcero-Oubiña, C., X. Ayán-Vila, P. Fábrega Álvarez and A. Teira Brión 2007 Arqueología, paisaje y sociedad. In F.J. González García (ed.), Los Pueblos de la Galicia Céltica, 131-258. Madrid: Akal.
Parcero-Oubiña, C., and F. Criado-Boado. 2013 Social change, social resistance: a long-term approach to the processes of transformation of social landscapes in the northwest Iberian Peninsula. In M. Cruz Berrocal, L. García Sanjuán and A. Gilman (eds.), The Prehistory of Iberia: Debating Early Social Stratification and the State, 249-66. New York: Routledge.
Parcero-Oubiña, C., and S. Nión-Álvarez 2021 Forms of settlement inequality over space: a GIS-based method for measuring differences among settlements. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 35: 102739. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102739
Peregrine, P.N. 2001 Matrilocality, corporate strategy and the organization of production in the Chacoan World. American Antiquity 66: 36-46. https://doi.org/10.2307/2694316
Poux, M. 2004 L’âge du vin. Rites de boisson, festins et libations en Gaule indépendante. Montagnac, France: Éditions Monique Mergoil.
Prociuk, N.H. 2019 Protection and purity: symbolic functions of the Iron Age saunas of the Iberian northwest. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 29: 125-40. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774318000422
Rapoport, A. 1969 House Form and Culture. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Rodríguez Díaz, A., I. Pavón Soldevilla and D.M. Duque Espino 2018 De cabañas a casas. Estrategias sociales en la
prehistoria final de la Meseta (1400-400 AC). Badajoz, Spain: Universidad de Extremadura.
Roymans, N., and F. Gerritsen 2002 Landscape, ecology and mentalités: a long-term perspective on developments in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 68: 257-87. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0079497X00001535
Ruano Posada, L. 2021 La arquitectura en tierra en la fachada cantábrica durante la Edad del Hierro: una revisión de materiales y técnicas constructivas desde la arqueometría y la arqueología virtual. Anejos a Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología 5: 217-43. https://doi.org/10.15366/ane2021.5.00
Sastre, I. 2008 Community, identity, and conflict: Iron Age warfare in the Iberian Northwest. Current Anthropology 49: 1021-51. https://doi.org/10.1086/529423
Scott, J.C. 2017 Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1bvnfk9
Seco Serra, I. 2010 Piedras con alma. El betilismo en el Mundo Antiguo y sus manifestaciones en la Península Ibérica. Seville: Universidad de Sevilla.
Sjöberg, G. 1960 The Preindustrial City: Past and Present. New York: The Free Press.
Smith, M.E. 2007 Form and meaning in the earliest cities: a new approach to ancient urban planning. Journal of Planning History 6: 3-47. https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513206293713
———. 2010 The archaeological study of neighborhoods and districts in ancient cities. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29: 137-54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2010.01.001
———. 2016 How can archaeologist identify early cities? Definitions, types, and attributes. In M. Fernández-Götz and D. Krausse (eds.), Eurasia at the Dawn of History: Urbanization and Social Change, 153-68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316550328.010
Smith, M.L. 2008 Urban empty spaces: contentious places for consensus-building. Archaeological Dialogues 15: 216-31. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203808002687
Souvatzi, S. 2008 A Social Archaeology of Households in Neolithic Greece: An Anthropological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2017 Kinship and social archaeology. Cross-Cultural Research 51: 172-95. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397117691028
Steadman, S. 1996 Recent research in the archaeology of architecture: beyond the foundation. Journal of Archaeological Research 4: 51-93. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02228838
Stegmaier, G. 2017 Ritual, society and settlement structure: driving forces of urbanization during the second and first century BC in southwest Germany. In S. Stoddart (ed.), Delicate Urbanism in Context: Settlement Nucleation in Pre-Roman Germany, 41-48. Cambridge: University of Cambridge.
Thollard, P. 1987 Barbarie et civilisation chez Strabon – étude critique des livres III et IV de la ‘Géographie’. Paris: Les Belles Letres. https://doi.org/10.3406/ista.1987.2210
Thomas, J. 1999 Time, Culture and Identity: An Interpretative Archaeology. London: Routledge.
Thurston, T.L. 2009 Unity and diversity in the European Iron Age: out of the mists, some clarity? Journal of Archaeological Research 17: 347-423. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10814-009-9032-Z
Villa Valdés, A. 2011 Santuarios ‘urbanos’ en la protohistoria cantábrica: algunas consideraciones sobre el significado y función de las saunas castreñas. Boletín de letras del Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos 65: 9-46.
Von Nicolai, C. 2014 Symbolic meanings of Iron Age hillfort defences in Continental Europe. In M. Fernández Götz, H. Wendling and K. Winger (eds.), Paths to Complexity: Centralisations and Urbanisation in Iron Age Europe, 111-22. Oxford: Oxbow. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1dt9v.14
Wilk, R.R., and W.L. Rathje. 1982 Household archaeology. American Behavioral Scientist 25: 617-39. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 000276482025006003
Wright, H.T. 2006 Early state dynamics as political experiment. Journal of Anthropological Research 62: 305-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/00671990902796028
