The rural landscape of Eastern Iberia Iron Age : agricultural intensification and sociopolitical dynamics
This paper focuses on the rural landscape during the Iberian Iron Age in the Valencia Region (Eastern Spain). This paper deals with two main issues. The first is to integrate and analyze the results of archeological fieldwork to understand the systems of settlement and land-use intensification during the Iberian Iron Age. The second issue addresses socio-economic aspects related to changes in the observable spatial patterns. These processes are characterized by the dynamics of urbanization and emergence of Iberian Early States.
Dynamic landscapes, artifact taphonomy, and landuse modeling in the western Mediterranean
The Polop Alto valley, in eastern Spain, is characteristic of many Mediterranean landscapes. It has been sporadically reoccupied over the course of at least 80 kyr. Its landforms have undergone various geomorphic processes resulting from late Quaternary environmental fluctuations. During the Holocene, the valley has been modified by millennia of extensive land clearance, cultivation, and terracing. As a result, the evidence for human activity and landuse is a cumulative, but discontiguous palimpsest of the most durable behavioral residues—primarily stone and ceramic artifacts—whose distributions have been affected by diverse natural and cultural formation processes. Human occupation of the Polop Alto spans the evolution of morphologically modern humans and the replacement of foraging economies by farming, arguably the two most significant biobehavioral transitions for human life today. To better understand the changes in human landuse that accompanied these important transitions, we have employed an integrated suite of techniques aimed at unmixing the diverse formation processes that have affected Polop Alto landscapes and material culture. These include patch‐based survey methods, photogrammetry, GIS‐based spatial analysis, and using artifact morphology and distribution to assess artifact taphonomy. This has permitted us to develop a diachronic settlement model for the 80 kyr of human occupation in the Polop Alto. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
El Paleolítico Inferior en El País Valenciano. Una aproximación a su estudio.
Aquest treball planteja una primera aproximacio al coneixement del poblament valencia mes antic (datat en el paleolitic inferior), en un moment en que, com a consequencia del descobriment i l'excavacio de la cova de Bolomor, es preveuen canvis importants en la inestigacio regional.