A recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory shed new light on the extent and organization of the El Argar civilization, which flourished over 4,000 years ago in what is now southeastern Spain. Researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology identified the economic and political borders that defined the territory of El Argar, revealing its maximum extent was similar to that of Catalonia and delineating it from its Bronze Age neighbors in La Mancha and Valencia.
According to Phys.org, the study analyzed the production and circulation of pottery vessels in the northern part of present-day Murcia, a borderland region between El Argar and the Valencian and La Mancha Bronze Age groups from 2200 to 1550 BCE. The researchers employed a methodology based on field surveys, petrographic analysis of ceramic materials, and spatial modeling using geographic information systems (GIS). This approach allowed them to map the areas of ceramic production and circulation, which was central to their study.
"The study has allowed us to delineate not only the borders but also the expansion of the Argárica culture," said Roberto Risch, a professor of Prehistory at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and senior author of the research, according to El Pais. "These results significantly support the hypothesis that El Argar developed the first state structures around 1800 BCE in Western Europe."
The El Argar culture, which emerged between the north of present-day Almería and the south of what is now Murcia, is considered the first state structure of the Iberian Peninsula. The people of El Argar engaged in copper mining and relied on cereal production in the plains. They maintained relationships with their neighbors from the Bronze Age of La Mancha and the Valencian Bronze, who had less centralized social structures, as indicated by the study of ceramic production and circulation in the border area.
"Being Argárica is not just burying your people in your houses. Being Argárica is not just having some taxes. Rather, it is those eight ceramic forms, and not only their shape but how they are made," Risch added. "All the pottery of that culture is made with the same raw material that comes from very specific mountains, which are also the foundational territory of El Argar."
The research showed that the means of production and circulation of raw materials and products in El Argar were more developed than previously thought. This contributed to an integrated and uniform political and economic organization. The Argaric society managed to produce large quantities of ceramics and distribute them over long distances, indicating a regional-scale ceramic distribution network controlled by the villages of the Argaric core area.
In the southern half of the study area, typical Argaric ceramics prevail, made with clays extracted more than a hundred kilometers to the south, in the coastal mountains of Murcia and Almería. In contrast, the northern part of the territory exhibited a multiplicity of pottery workshops using local clays. This disparity implies the existence of asymmetrical relationships between different groups in the southeastern peninsula.
"All this led to the consolidation of asymmetrical relations between the groups of southeast Iberia, marked by the pre-eminence of El Argar, not only in the control of strategic resources, such as metals, but also of everyday objects such as pottery," explained Adrià Moreno Gil, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute and lead author of the study. "The imposition of borders ultimately served to establish these unequal relations, which developed into a true core-periphery system," he noted.
The researchers mapped 1,643 ceramic remains from 61 settlements, some Argaric and others from neighboring groups. By studying the composition of the clay from the hundreds of pieces recovered, they discovered that the clay originated from a single site, perhaps two, in the south of the current province of Murcia. "That an everyday object, with the need for human work it entails, is being produced in one place and distributed over a wide territory, sometimes at distances of about one hundred kilometers, tells us that the capacity for territorial control and structures for distributing materials had to be very developed," Moreno Gil added.
The study indicates that the economic systems of these communities were distinct, as evidenced by differences in clay and pottery techniques used in different regions of the Segura river basin. This demonstrates the existence of socioeconomic and political boundaries. These boundaries were reflected in the circulation of ceramics, which served as indicators of power relations and social differences.
"Our work demonstrates that ceramic analysis is a fundamental tool for understanding economic exchanges, social relationships, and the configuration of border spaces in prehistory," said Carla Garrido García, a doctoral researcher at UAB and co-author of the study.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.