Iron Age craftworks in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. An approach based in Cultural Inheritance Theory

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the craftwork on hard materials of animal origin from the Iron Age of the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. We deal with the processes of craftsmanship, transmission of knowledge and the circulation of ivory combs and perforated bone plates. The Cultural Inheritance Theory offers a framework to help identify social dynamics in the craft productions and the transmission of the cultural knowledge between and among individuals (vertical, horizontal or oblique). Therefore, the consequences of these cultural transmission processes will be different for each artefact. This could be used to investigate relative levels of standardization within and between groups. For this we use various morphometric measurements related to the technological process of making combs and perforated plates. The results point to an oblique transmission with particularities linked to each object related to their formal and decorative characteristics and owing to their raw materials.