Placing Sanctuaries in Their Socio‐Political Landscapes: A Diachronic Approach to the Late Iron Age Communities in South‐East Iberia (Fourth–Second Centuries BC)

Abstract

Summary This paper explores the relationship between the historical dynamics and the transformations observed in pre‐Roman cult places in eastern Iberia between the fourth and second centuries BC. These are analysed through a case study: the sanctuary of La Luz (Murcia), located in the Segura Valley, in south‐east Iberia. Three main religious changes are discussed from this perspective: the development of the sanctuary in the fourth century BC, the changes observed in its archaeological record in the third century BC, and finally its destruction in the second century BC. These offer a diachronic view of the transformations, and illustrate the different levels at which they were expressed, from the archaeological record to the landscape. The work aims to provide a different perspective from previous studies in this area and a new view of the cult places in south‐east Iberia within their socio‐political landscape and the Mediterranean historical context.

Dealing with the Outside

“…In any case, funerary areas and cult places provided us with remarkable examples to illustrate our analysis and explore this issue which, however, has been never approached in the area from this perspective. In fact, the few studies addressing these territories have hardly ever dealt with socio-political issues, paying attention to the archaeological study of main sites and necropolises (amongst others, Gallardo et al 2017;Lillo Carpio 1981;Page 1998;Page, García 1993) or, more recently, focusing on individual sites (González et al 2014;López-Mondéjar 2016). Fortunately, some works have examined these aspects in the nearby regions (Grau 2014;Ruiz, Molinos 2013), providing an interesting framework to examine for the first time the territories in question from a global and integrative perspective.…”