Abstract
We discuss the ethnogenesis of the Central Portugal Late Bronze Age populations arguing that theycorrelate well with the later descriptions of the Lusitanians.The economic result of the local agricultural produce, pastoralism and wild fruits collecting was notenough by itself to support an economic growth of these societies that was capable to allow more than asmall amount of wealth concentration. Accordingly, we think that social elite's genesis and developmentin the local Late Bronze Age Groups is based on a «wealth finance» system for which the control ofmetal's production and circulation provides the means.Also matrimonial exchanges could well be behind a network of elite alliances thus accounting for thequick diffusion of metallurgical technologies and models and their local reproduction.Peripheral to the expansion of the Mediterranean network of commerce in the LX/VIII centuries BC, theinterior areas of this system are very vulnerable to any change in the metal commerce networks. Thiswill determine their demise during the VI century BC as a result of the temporary collapse of theMediterranean-Atlantic commerce network. The exception is the Atlantic Estremadura where the morediversified economy and the cosmopolitanism of its incipient urbes will allow a steady developmentduring the Iron Age.So both the characterisation of the local Late Bronze Age Groups and their subsequent evolutioncorrespond well with the description by the classic authors of the Lusitanians and the «two Lusitanias»allowing us to argue that their ethnogenesis goes back at least to the Late Bronze Age.
Highlights
We discuss the ethnogenesis of the Central Portugal Late Bronze Age populations arguing that they correlate well with the later descriptions of the Lusitanians
For Beira Alta we argued as the main explanation the lack of a local stable and reliable food source as the basis for staple finance, as in the Southwest, together with the lack of a rich and diversified agricultural economy that could support the emergence of wealth finance as in the Estremadura ( GILMAN, 1987)
A small increase in social complexity eventually took place, mainly in the Late Copper Age and especially during the transition to the Bronze Age, as it is revealed by the appearance of beakers and the first metal artefacts ( SENNA - MARTINEZ, 1994b) as well as the development of a system for volume measurement that arose in the Early/Middle Bronze
Summary
We raised before (SENNA-MARTINEZ, 1995a) the question of why we don't have in the culture groups of Beira Alta, from the fourth to second millennium BC, with one possible exception, a historical trajectory similar to the ones in the Portuguese Estremadura and Southwest and resulting in complex settlement systems. Several radiocarbon dates from recently excavated sites in both areas ( SENNA - MARTINEZ , 1994a; V A Z , in press; VILAÇA , 1995) allow us to say that at least some of the local Late Bronze Age central settlements were already established in the last two centuries of the second millennium BC (Table I). 368-369) with the possible addition of barley, according to seed impressions found in pottery All of this means that the main subsistence elements present at the Late Bronze Age sites show a marked continuity to the ones we assume regionally (at least in Beira Alta) for the antecedent Early/Middle Bronze Age (SENNA-MARTINEZ, 1993b and 1993c). The emergence of individual burials — suggested by the findings of Fonte da Malga (KALB & HOCK, 1979) and Paranho (COELHO, 1925) together with the final abandonment of the megalithic necropoli9 — is a sure indication that changes are affecting the ideology as well
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