Exploring Alternative Pathways to Social Complexity in the European Iron Age: The Northwestern Iberian Peninsula as a Case Study

Abstract

The study of non-hierarchical forms of social organization occupies a prominent place in the European Iron Age research. This paper explores the application of Pierre Clastres political anthropology to the study of the Iron Age. The approach of this study to the Iron Age focuses on the northwest of the Iberian peninsula. It was an area that experienced social changes from 1000 bc to the first century bc–first century ad, from the Bronze Age to the Roman conquest. Using the archaeological record of the northwest Iberian peninsula as a case study, the paper tries to show the potential benefits of applying Clastres’ ideas to the interpretation of European societies from the Iron Age: overcoming, thanks to the application of the concept of non-coercive power, the false and increasingly frequent image of non-hierarchical societies and introducing new ways of explaining social complexity that are not based on economic criteria.

Following the Roman Army between the Southern Foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains and the Northern Plains of Castile and León (North of Spain): Archaeological Applications of Remote Sensing and Geospatial Tools

“…Recent discussions among the scholars devoted to the Iron Age societies in this region also emphasise the existence of regionalised cultural and social traits among the indigenous communities [8,60,61,189,190]. Considering this may prevent us to assume a uniform narrative about the Roman conquest of northwestern Iberia [170].…”

Societies against the Chief? Re-Examining the Value of “Heterarchy” as a Concept for Studying European Iron Age Societies

“…Following Pierre Clastres, some archaeologists have recently argued that the success of Later Iron Age social organization represents a reaction of "hillforts against the state" (González- García, 2017;González-García et al, 2011).…”

Egalitarianism and resistance: A theoretical proposal for Iron Age Northwestern Iberian archaeology

“…For the Early Iron Age (8th–5th centuries BC) a model based on Clastres’ (1974) “societies against the State” has been proposed (González-García, 2017; González-García et al., 2011). This interpretation rightly implies a cultural construction based on resistance against Bronze Age hierarchies.…”

“…Around 400 BC “the mechanisms that had previously been used to inhibit social division now began to act in the opposite way, when the changes in the productive landscape indicate a new intensification that would once again make it possible to generate surpluses” (Parcero and Criado, 2013: 263–264). Some anthropological models have been proposed for this hierarchical Second Iron Age: Germanic societies (Parcero, 2003); kinship-based chiefdoms (González-Ruibal, 2011); or warrior societies with circuits of prestige goods (González-García, 2017). Egalitarianism is reluctantly accepted, but only for highland “deep rural” areas (González-Ruibal, 2011).…”