Circulation of silicified oolitic limestone blades in South-Iberia (Spain and Portugal) during the third millennium B.C.: an expression of a core/periphery framework

Abstract

The prestige goods economy model and the peer polity interaction model used by archaeologists to explain the development of power in the third millennium B.C. in Iberia fail to discriminate the circulation of goods between unequal political/social structures. This study offers an alternative explanation, in terms of core/periphery relationships, by means of a petrologic, morphometric, spatial, and contextual analysis of the silicified oolitic limestone blades found in archaeological sites dated back to the third millennium B.C. in southern Iberia. This suggests the existence of a supra-regional circulation of highly standardized, finished products, which spread over a distance of more than 500 km and an area of over 222,000 km 2. In this sense, the blades have become the first archaeological indicator of the paths, types, and contents of the relationships developed within and around the intersettlement hierarchical framework of the Guadalquivir Valley from 3000 to 2500 B.C., accounting for the emergence and collapse of a political system.