Producing Inequalities: Regional Sequences in Later Prehistoric Southern Spain

This paper presents regional sequences of production, consumption and social relations in southern Spain from the beginning of the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age (c. 5600–1550 BC). The regions studied are southeast Spain, Valencia, the southern Meseta and central/western Andalucía. The details presented for each region and period vary in quality but show how much our knowledge of the archaeological record of southern Spain has changed during the last four decades. Among the surprises are the rapidity of agricultural adoption, the emergence of regional centres of aggregated population in enclosed/fortified settlements of up to 400 hectares in the fourth and third millennia BC, the use of copper objects as instruments of production, rather than as items with a purely symbolic or ‘prestige’ value, large-scale copper production in western Andalucía in the third millennium BC (as opposed to the usual domestic production model), and the inference of societies based on relations of class.