Valencina: A copper age polity

Abstract

For a century, Copper Age Iberia (c. 3200-2200 BCE) has been seen as a grand laboratory for discussions of early social complexity. And yet, most theories were, from an empirical view point, infra-determined, as evidence was limited and restricted to a few sites. This situation has changed, as the availability of high-quality scientific data for a broader spectrum of sites now provides opportunities for fresh theoretical approaches. We propose a new take on emergent Iberian Copper Age social organisation, based on elements of political economy and collective action. We use the Valencina Copper Age mega-site, located in south-western Spain, to postulate the crucial role played by monumentalised central places in early complex societies. This site, and others like it, operated as attractors of large contingents of people, probably in the thousands, for social congregations that extended the fabric of society along a distinctive Neolithic pattern. Monument-building, largely (but not only) in the form of megaliths and ditched enclosures, brought people together, creating and maintaining a sense of belonging and cooperation, while at the same time keeping in check top-down impulses for more authoritarian and centralised political organisation. In the Neolithic tradition, monuments appear to create identity tied to place among expanding corporate social groups. Copper Age social formations lived in a ‘monument-oriented’ mode of production of sorts, in which the establishment of place and associated monumentalism served both to encourage and ‘burn’ surplus that could otherwise be manipulated and controlled by aspiring leaders. As part of this process, distinctive female leadership emerged at Valencina as materialized by identities supported by sumptuary objects made on exotic raw materials and produced by specialists. The social world built around Valencina as a monumentalised central place came to a rather abrupt end c. 2300, after which a different social medium, the Bronze Age, was started.