Estructura social y poder en las comunidades ibéricas de la franja central mediterránea

Abstract

Research carried out in the central region of Valencia has shown the existence of hierarchical societies and with clear signs of uneven distribution of wealth during the 5th to 3rd centuries BC. In that sense, the study area draws in other Iberian Iron age regions with similar social dynamics, although with patterns and rhythms that are its own. This paper will discuss the structure of these societies through various scales of analysis that shed light on different aspects: the Group clientele as a social unit of visible inequality in the necropolis, the settlement pattern, the internal structure of villages and collective rituals. We will show several cases of territorial organisation in the Edetania and in the North of the Contestania. These regions had different historical trajectories whose peculiarities are explained, in part, by the degree of consolidation and projection of each oppidum in the territory and the power form exercised from the oppidum (competitive power, aggregative power). We will pay special attention to the bases (economic, strategic, rituals) which allow to build and maintain wealth and power and how is manipulated to define social hierarchies.