Surveying El Argar, Almeria, Spain: prehistoric settlement patterns and social processes

This paper explores the extensive prehistoric settlement pattern at the Letolo plantation. Using the results of earlier research we use a correspondence analysis to investigate variation in the settlement pattern, particularly differences between coastal and inland locations. Investigation of archaeological sites in Samoa in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in several suggestions about the prehistoric settlement pattern (Davidson 1969, Davidson 1974:242; Jennings et al. 1982). The first archaeological excavations investigated a variety of sites, and an important conclusion of this research was that prehistoric settlement was established at both coastal and inland locales in early prehistory (at least by c. 2000 BP). It was also found that house pavements were an early component of the settlement sequence, but raised stone and earth platforms/mounds for occupation or ritual space are, to current knowledge, confined to the last millennium (Wallin, Martinsson-Wallin and Clark, this publication). A temporal shift in material culture in Samoa is thereby evident. Roads and stone walls were frequently associated with large platforms/mounds. The roads were often clearly defined by stone walls and connected house hold units. Settlement pattern studies Jennings et al. (1982) based their discussion of Samoan prehistoric settlement patterns on data from ethnohistorical records, extensive archaeological survey data and excavations, which they compared with the layout of the contemporary village of Fa'a'ala on Savai'i. The results of the Letolo archaeological survey were employed to interpret the prehistoric settlement pattern, but other settlements at Mt Olo on Upolu, and the Sapapali'i settlements on Savai'i were also brought into the discussion. Using the ethnohistoric settlement data as a backdrop, Jennings et al. (1982) concluded that prehistoric settlements consisted of a household unit (HHU) made up of a few individual house platforms, with a cooking area separated from the other units by walls or walkways (more than 75% were enclosed by walls), and a possible garden area within the enclosure (Jennings et al. 1982:82). Several HHU grouped around a chief's dwelling unit, which was identified by a larger platform. Collectively these chiefly clusters constituted a unit called pito nu'u (residential wards). Several pito nu'u clusters constituted a larger unit called nu'u (village) with a mala'e (village green) and a fale tele (community house). Larger platforms were identified as a chief's dwelling or a community meeting house, and through the use of statistical methods the Letolo settlement pattern was divided in to five village wards (pito nu'u) by Jennings et al. (1982:84) (Figure 1). Roger Green subsequently put forward a sequence in which the settlement pattern has various phases, but there is strong cultural continuity evident throughout the prehistoric sequence (Green 2002:135-146): 1. Settlement patterns during the period of the decorated Lapita ceramics (c. 2900-2700 BP) 2. Settlement patterns during the period of Polynesian plainware (c.2700-2000/1500? BP) 3. An interval for which settlement pattern evidence is extremely limited (c. 1500-1000 BP) 4. Settlement patterns between 1000 and 200 years ago (c. 1000-200 BP). The earliest archaeological evidence for the settlement pattern came from a house site with Polynesian plainware at Sasoa'a which was dated to c. 1800 BP (Green 2002:138139). The house comprised a principal dwelling (PPN *fale) with its posts (PPN *pou, tulu), and other features including an earth oven (PPN *umu), stone pavement (PPN *paepae), storage pit (PPN *lua) and boundary fence (PPN *lotuqaa). The house layout and features were seen by Green as similar to those of the later household units (HHU), suggesting that there was continuity in the social formations expressed in the Samoan settlement pattern. Green also suggests that Ancestral Polynesian societies were house societies and HHU were tied to a social group (PPN * kainga) 'aiga probably lead by a family elder (PPN * fatu). …

This paper explores the nature and dynamics of economic and political borders emerging in Later Prehistory between highly centralised and exploitative societies and their much more dispersed and small scale neighbours. While increasing evidence indicates that Early Bronze Age entities such as El Argar, Únětice, or Minoan Crete reached highly complex economic and political forms around 1850–1750 BCE, the processes by which their relations and borders with adjacent, less hierarchical groups were established and maintained still remain poorly understood. To identify such economic and political borders and asymmetric interactions in archaeology a specific methodological approach was developed which combined extensive field survey, pottery petrography, and spatial modelling of pottery production and circulation areas. We focused on the middle and upper Segura river valley, where, according to previous research, the border of one of the most complex entities of Bronze Age Europe, El Argar, was expected to have evolved between c. 2000 − 1550 BCE. Still today, this region is an archaeologically largely unexplored borderland region between markedly different geographic units of the Iberian peninsula. While El Argar expanded over semi arid Southeast, archaeological research in La Mancha and the Spanish Levant, adjacent to the middle and upper Segura river valley, has identified much smaller scale socio-economic entities, known, respectively, as La Mancha or Las Motillas and the Valencian Bronze Age cultures. At the junction between these three entities, over 4800 km² including 61 settlements were surveyed and their pottery sampled. This allowed to carry out the largest petrographic analysis of Bronze Pottery in the Iberian Bronze Age, including 1643 pottery sherds. Spatial modelling of the petrographic results was developed to trace the production and circulation of pottery and raw materials, offering insights into economic exchanges, social boundaries, and the long-term articulation of borderland spaces. By identifying distinct pottery-making practices and mapping their distribution, we reveal the nature of interactions between El Argar’s core regions and its neighbouring La Mancha and Valencian Bronze Age communities. This study serves to highlight the potential of ceramic production and circulation as indicators of border dynamics. Similar studies in other regions are expected to lead to a better understanding of how borders shaped Bronze Age societies and contributed to broader patterns of regional organisation and inter-group relations.

During the Early Bronze Age (EBA), a relatively small number of European societies developed into highly centralised and hierarchical political entities. In contrast to the intensive research focused on these groups, little attention has been paid to their relationship with neighbouring populations, which had a much more egalitarian structure. In the southeast quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula, over a century of research on the EBA (ca. 2200 –1550 BC) communities has failed to identify distinctive traits leading to the definition of archaeological entities beyond the El Argar group, which according to many authors reached the form of an early state organisation around 1750 BC. This study aims to go beyond previous culturalist approaches and to focus on how communities with very different social organisations interacted in this macro-region as well as in a border region between El Argar and La Mancha. To that effect, we analyse primarily settlement size as an expression of the demographic and economic strength of a community, and ‘enrockment’ (enrocamiento), a concept that defines the degree of protection and spatial distancing of a settlement from its surrounding land and neighbouring communities. This large-scale comparative approach reveals the distinctiveness of highly dispersed and well-protected communities settling in the belt immediately north of El Argar and shows how this cost-intensive strategy changes with increasing distance from El Argar, when flat land and often larger settlements become dominant. The combination of settlement patterns and economic organisation also highlights the marked differences between El Argar and all the other communities living in the Iberian Peninsula.

Prehistoric settlement patterns on the Tibetan Plateau, particularly in the Qaidam Basin, have drawn significant scholarly interest. Yet, limited data have hindered a comprehensive understanding the Bronze Age chronology and landscape exploitation in this region. This paper presents 24 newly obtained radiocarbon dates from eight archaeological sites within the Qaidam Basin on the Tibetan Plateau. Integrated with existing 14 C data and spatial analysis, these findings reveal an overall continuous occupation of the basin from ca. 3600–2500 calBP, with a gradual shift from expansive lowland settlements to smaller, ephemeral high-altitude structures, identified around 3350 calBP. This change is consistent with demonstrated periods of climate degradation which likely drove strategic adaptations in landscape management and subsistence methods. Overall, this research not only establishes a more robust chronology for the Qaidam Basin’s Bronze Age, but also advances the discussion on human-environment interactions in high-altitude areas during late prehistory.

This thesis, firstly, describes the traditional settlement patterns of the Garawa people of northern Australia. Secondly, it develops methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of hunter-gatherer settlement patterns, placing particular emphasis on the importance of discriminating between micro-scale phenomena (short-term. localised, individual) and macro-scale phenomena (long-term. regional, population). Thirdly, it identifies the cultural and non-cultural variables that structured long-term regional settlement patterns of a hunter-gatherer population in a particular environment. This is achieved through a case study providing an analysis of the cultural and environmental factors that structured the traditional settlement patterns of the Garawa. The physical, social, subsistence and settlement landscapes of the Garawa are defined and discussed. It is demonstrated that social factors had little impact on the macro-scale pattern of Garawa settlement. Instead settlement patterns clearly reflected the articulation of the subsistence and settlement landscapes with the physical landscape. It is argued that macro-scale hunter-gatherer settlement patterns were organised in response to macro-geographic environmental structures. The level of correspondence in this relationship is such that it may be argued that similar environments, separated in space and time, would structure settlement patterns in similar ways, regardless of variation in social and/or religious organisation. The use of macro-scale settlement models, developed through judicious analysis of ethnographic data, is shown to be a legitimate means of approaching the interpretation of the regional archaeological record. Identification of the processes and variables that structured ethnographically documented macro-scale hunter-gatherer settlement patterns will facilitate the identification of the processes and variables that structured prehistoric hunter-gatherer settlement patterns.

This paper explores the nature and dynamics of economic and political borders emerging in Later Prehistory between highly centralised and exploitative societies and their much more dispersed and small-scale neighbours. While increasing evidence indicates that Early Bronze Age entities such as El Argar, Únětice or Minoan Crete reached highly complex economic and political forms around 1850–1750 BCE, the processes by which their relations and borders with adjacent, less hierarchical groups were established and maintained still remain poorly understood. To identify such economic and political borders and asymmetric interactions in archaeology, a specific methodological approach was developed which combined extensive field survey, pottery petrography, and spatial modelling of pottery production and circulation areas. Our research focuses on the middle and upper Segura River valley, a largely unexplored borderland between distinct geographic and cultural zones of the Iberian Peninsula. While El Argar expanded over the semi-arid Southeast, adjacent regions—La Mancha and the Spanish Levant—were home to smaller-scale socio-economic entities, known as La Mancha or Las Motillas and the Valencian Bronze Age cultures. At the junction of these three groups, we surveyed 61 settlements across 4800 km2 and analyzed 1643 pottery sherds, conducting the largest petrographic study of Iberian Bronze Age ceramics. Spatial modeling of the results traced pottery production and circulation, offering insights into economic exchanges, social boundaries and the articulation of borderland spaces. By mapping distinct pottery-making practices, we reveal interactions between El Argar’s core regions and its neighbours, demonstrating the potential of ceramic analysis for understanding Bronze Age border dynamics. Comparable studies in other regions are expected to lead to a better understanding of the role of borders in shaping prehistoric societies and inter-group relations.

Whilst Sicily is the largest and perhaps most geographically diverse island in the Mediterranean, archaeological survey has been slow to develop there and has had little impact on general accounts of Sicilian prehistory. Discussions of prehistoric settlement distribution in the island have to contend with uneven data obtained by different means and limited evidence for past land-use and environmental change. Nevertheless, survey data point to contrasting settlement patterns between the fourth and first millennia BC (Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages), which can usefully be compared with information from conventional (non-survey) distribution maps. Surveys have the potential to promote new accounts of Sicilian prehistory in which traditional historicist paradigms are at least complemented by those which place a stronger emphasis on relationships or dynamics within the specific island context.

Despite the central location of the Cyclades in the southern Aegean Sea, there has been little intensive investigation of the islands’ prehistoric settlement pattern. Here it is shown how close comparison of mainly surface evidence from two sites on the islands of Amorgos and Keros can contribute to our understanding of the diversity of sites in the Early Bronze Age and of the dynamics of interaction between them.

The Early Bronze Age in Europe is characterized by social and genetic transformations, starting in the early 3rd millennium BCE. New settlement and funerary structures, artifacts and techniques indicate times of change with increasing economic asymmetries and political hierarchization. Technological advances in metallurgy also played an important role, facilitating trade and exchange networks, which became tangible in higher levels of mobility and connectedness. Archeogenetic studies have revealed a substantial transformation of the genetic ancestry around this time, ultimately linked to the expansion of steppe- and forest steppe pastoralists from Eastern Europe. Evidence for emerging infectious diseases such as Yersinia pestis adds further complexity to these tumultuous and transformative times. The El Argar complex in southern Iberia marks the genetic turnover in southwestern Europe ~ 2200 BCE that accompanies profound changes in the socio-economic structure of the region. To answer the question of who was buried in the emblematic double burials of the El Argar site La Almoloya, we integrated results from biological relatedness analyses and archaeological funerary contexts and refined radiocarbon-based chronologies from 68 individuals. We find that the El Argar society was virilocally and patrilineally organized and practiced reciprocal female exogamy, supported by pedigrees that extend up to five generations along the paternal line. Synchronously dated adult males and females from double tombs were found to be unrelated mating partners, whereby the incoming females reflect socio-political alliances among El Argar groups. In three cases these unions had common offspring, while paternal half-siblings also indicate serial monogamy or polygyny.

ABSTRACTThis research addresses the territorial organisation of metallurgical production during the El Argar Bronze Age (2200–1550 cal bc) in the inner areas of El Argar territory through lead‐isotope and trace element analyses of geological copper ores, archaeometallurgical remains and copper‐based artefacts. Results from 31 mineral and 35 archaeological samples suggest that the exploitation of copper resources in the studied region was significant and had a similar impact than other mining districts of El Argar territory. This, therefore, leads the hierarchical and centralised production model to be questioned. It also appears that the copper ore deposits in the coastal regions that were intensively exploited during the Copper Age were used less intensively in the El Argar period. At that time, copper was mostly procured from ore deposits in the inland areas of El Argar territory: that is, ore deposits within the Alpine orogeny hinterland (inland areas of the Betic Cordillera, from Granada to Baza). Other artefacts were sourced from outside the Alpine geological domain, but still on the fringe of El Argar territory (the foothills of the Sierra Morena‐Linares mining district) or even from ore deposits definitely outside El Argar territory itself (the Los Pedroches Variscan region and elsewhere).

Circulation of olives, figs and grapes in the area of El Argar culture in south-eastern Spain

This article provides an overview of current knowledge of late prehistoric (~500 bc – ad 1800) settlement patterns in the Mid-Fraser region from just south of Lillooet in the south to Kelly Lake in the north (Figure 1). We survey current understandings of indigenous subsistence and settlement patterns, and then discuss the radiocarbon dating of these settlements. Our purpose is to provide context for the major archaeological debates in the region, which hinge primarily on interpretations of changes in subsistence and on radiocarbon evidence. Several of our maps of large village sites are original, as is our summary of all radiocarbon evidence and our use of such evidence to interpret regional population dynamics. Along the middle reaches of the Fraser River, prehistoric habitation sites are well preserved and relatively intact. Most Late Prehistoric habitation sites in this region are identified by the presence of housepits, the collapsed remains of pithouses, the semi-subterranean winter habitations used by most Interior Salish peoples at contact. Housepits are crater-like depressions 5- m in diameter (from rim crest to rim crest) and from 10 cm to  m in depth. Archaeologists use the presence of housepits to define the Late Prehistoric Period and the Plateau Pithouse Tradition (ppt) in the Mid-Fraser region. After about 1500 bc, the ppt is characterized by winter aggregation in sedentary seasonal villages and by the intensive use and storage of salmon, deer, roots (geophytes), and berries (Pokotylo and Mitchell 1998; Rousseau 004). In the Canadian or Northern Plateau, a culture area encompassing most of the Fraser River watershed and much of

Air photography in the drought of 1984 and in the dry summer of 1989 has produced cropmark evidence in Dyfed for a number of defended enclosures whose morphology suggests a new site type that may be commonplace throughout the region.The county of Dyfed has good surviving earthworks of defended enclosures and small hillforts, and hitherto most discussion on settlement patterns has been confined to upstanding sites. Air surveys since 1978, especially in dry summers, have begun to produce evidence for an inadequacy in our understanding of prehistoric and native Romano-British settlement patterns with the discovery of many new defended enclosures surviving only as cropmarks. Building on the work of Professor St Joseph, numerous straight-sided defended cropmark enclosures have been revealed, although the probably mistaken assumption that some of these are of Roman date has tended to exclude them from consideration of prehistoric settlement patterns. The straight-sided cropmark noted by the author in 1984 underlying the surviving earthworks of the later prehistoric Woodbarn Rath (SN 01681703) has corroborative excavation evidence (Vyner 1986) that this cropmark at least is of earlier prehistoric date.

A survey to locate prehistoric sites on the island of St. Vincent found 25 new sites and three previously unrecorded cultural components. The goal was to analyze settlement patterns. The survey data was plotted on maps along with all other new information and previously reported sites. Six variables were considered: location by quadrant, coastal versus inland distance to reefs, windward versus leeward location, elevation, and potential vegetation. These were then compared to the regional pattern for the Windward Islands after adding the new information to the regional database. The results showed that in some cases settlement patterns on St. Vincent differed from the regional patterns. The results confirm a preference for the southwest quadrant during Saladoid times rather than the northeast as had previously been hypothesized. Coast locations, low elevation, cactus scrub, or secondary rainforest are the preferred conditions for settlement at all time periods. These conditions supersede any preference for locating on either the windward or leeward side of St. Vincent. Unlike the regional settlement patterns, locations directly adjacent to reefs do not appear to be as important for prehistoric peoples on St. Vincent.

Using multivariate statistics and fuzzy logic system to analyse settlement preferences in lowland areas of the temperate zone: an example from the Polish Lowlands