Interpreting archaeological continuities: an approach to transversal equality in the Argaric Bronze Age of south-east Iberia

TLDR

Bronze Age Iberian societies have been studied as exhibiting social inequality, with mainstream research interpreting material discontinuities as evidence of unequal groups and treating equality and inequality as mutually exclusive. This study aims to challenge that assumption by demonstrating that, using the Argaric Bronze Age, social equality can coexist with inequality. Despite overall inequality, analysis of women's material culture reveals funerary continuities that indicate a transversal social equality. Keywords: social intersections, transversal equality, gender identity, archaeological continuities, Bronze Age Iberia, El Argar; acknowledgements to Paloma González‑Marcén and James McGlade; author is ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.

Abstract

Abstract As archaeologists, we seek to understand how the people of the past we study lived and interacted. In approaching this complex enterprise it has been fundamental to discern to what extent social equality and inequality were present among them. In the case of the Bronze Age communities I will present here, mainstream research has interpreted a selected range of perceived discontinuities in material culture as evidence of the presence of unequal social groups of equals and, additionally, has usually considered equality and inequality as exclusive categories. This paper will attempt to demonstrate that this is not always the case, using examples from the Argaric Bronze Age of Iberia. Here, and despite the evident existence of a general social inequality, a closer look at women's material culture allows us to interpret continuities in the funerary record as signs of a social transversal equality. Keywords: Social intersectionstransversal equalitygender identityarchaeological continuitiesBronze Age IberiaEl Argar Acknowledgements I would like to thank Paloma González-Marcén and James McGlade for helpful comments and suggestions on a previous version of this paper. Additionally, I am grateful to James McGlade for his improvement of my English. ICREA Research Professor, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain