A new theoretical model is proposed for the definition of social structure and processes of change of the Castro Culture societies. It is based on current anthropological approaches to 'agrarian segmentary societies' and implies the revision of the aristocratic models that now dominate research on the European Iron Age.
E-JAVIER SÁNCHEZ-PALENCIA (*) M.^ DOLORES FERNÁNDEZ-POSSE (**) JULIO FERNÁNDEZ MANZANO (***) ALMUDENA OREJAS (*) LUIS CARLOS PÉREZ (****) INÉS SASTRE (*) RESUMEN El proyecto de investigación de la Zona Arqueológica de Las Médulas (León) se ha realizado desde una perspectiva científica y patrimonial que valorase su comprensión como un paisaje cultural, resultando a su vez de un proceso histórico. En este artículo se analizan los presupuestos y condicionantes de esa concepción, los criterios que permiten llegar a esa valoración y las medidas concretas tomadas hasta ahora para su conversión en Parque Arqueológico, como proyección social de la labor investigadora.
This paper proposes a new view of conflict in European Iron Age societies: considering isolationism as an alternative to warfare. Study of the castros (fortified settlements) of the Iberian Northwest suggests the organization of production as a main explanatory element in the emergence of identities based on exclusion and the imposition of communal structures of power. The relationship between these communities must have been one of conflict, and the unequal productive success of domestic units and the requirement of external marriage interchanges created realms of interaction in which internal conflict surely arose. These tendencies were kept in check by controlling settlement growth. Although a conflict-prone situation is documented in the archaeological record, there is no evidence that warfare as an endemic reality created groups of warriors. Warfare-related activity in these Iron Age societies was neither heroic nor hierarchical. Warfare did not determine the form of society but rather was related to the productive and reproductive organization of the societies that engaged in it.
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