Methods of Palaeodemography: The Case of the Iberian Oppida and Roman Cities in North‐East Spain

Abstract

Summary Ancient demography is a recurrent topic in archaeology, thanks to new methods and evidence from different surveys and excavations. However, different cultures or periods are studied on their own, without any comparison being made between them and of their population dynamics. The present paper seeks to advance the situation by defining methodologies to allow diachronic comparisons between two different periods and cultures. After setting out a methodological approach, the paper goes on to apply the same to a case study: namely the Roman conquest of north‐east Spain, comparing the demography of the ancient Iberian communities (fourth‐second centuries BCE) to the Roman colonization (first century BCE to first century CE). Roman urbanism is generally supposed to increase the population in a particular territory, but our present evidence refutes this point: a decrease in population is visible in urban or proto‐urban sites from the Iberian to Roman periods, though there is an increase in the rural densities.

Actas del XIX Congreso de Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica. TIG al servicio de los ODS Zaragoza, 12 a 14 de septiembre de 2022

“…Se ha realizado un script que de forma automática repetirá el proceso en cada una de las categorías temporales que se definirán en el futuro (dinastías, reinados,…). En el estado actual de la investigación contamos con esa información en el caso de los tesoros, pero está pendiente la categorización de las ciudades que se ha demostrado más compleja (Sinner y Carreras Monfort 2019).…”

A Preliminary Approach to Early Iron Age Demography. Testing Paleodemographic Methodologies on a Microspatial Scale: The Case of Punta De Muros (Nw Iberia)

“…LIE has been developed according to demographic calculations drawn during the last decades (e.g. Gracia et al, 1996;Py, 1996;Sinner and Carreras Monfort, 2019), which have been put together in order to offer a method that provides archaeological and ethnographic-based estimations. Although a correlative estimation may be troubling, it has been considered due to the possibility of obtaining support data very close in time and space, especially if a discrimination between different ways of inhabiting the household is possible.…”

Evaluating the Environmental Kuznets Curves through Archaeological Data: A Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

“…In north-eastern Iberia, urban populations calculated using estimated densities and (when available) house sizes appear to be lower after the Roman conquest. This is not a result of population loss, since rural settlement expands significantly (Sinner and Carreras 2019). It is very likely that economic output increased because of a much more productive agriculture evidenced by the widespread implantation of villas economy and largescale wine production (Carreras, López Mullor, and Guitart 2013).…”