Bronze Age frontiers and pottery circulation. Political and economic relations at the northern fringes of El Argar, Southeast Iberia, ca. 2200-1550 BCE

Abstract

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.