Now comes the crunch – to make a connection between the simulated archaeological record, i.e. the faunal assemblages generated by the computer model, and the real world. I'm not sure which of these might be termed the prose and which the passion but certainly if a connection is made the value of both will be exalted! This connection must, however, be meaningful. To show that the computer model can produce patterning which is similar to that in real assemblages is insufficient in itself. Many very different models may produce patterns which cannot be distinguished between – like the echoes in a Marabar cave – and all of which may bear a resemblance to the real data. This is the problem of equiflnality, which haunts those using simulation and has scared some away. Similarly, we can never be absolutely sure that patterns in faunal assemblages are not purely the result of preservation and excavation. My solution to these problems is that we must examine whether the model producing the simulated pattern, and in this case the type of decision making that is implied, is useful for explaining other aspects of the same archaeological record which initially appear unconnected with faunal assemblages.

In his poem Seamus Heaney reflects upon his father digging potatoes: By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.’ He, however, chose to work with the pen. Times had changed for the Heaney family as indeed they have in archaeology. Not long ago, when archaeologists were faced with the types of problems I have outlined in the previous chapter, their reaction would have been to ‘dig more sites’. More recently an alternative reaction has been to seek a total immersion in theory. We now realise that more data and theory do not necessarily bring more understanding and explanation by themselves. We need the link between these, new methodology. Tools other than picks and shovels are required. So, with apologies to Heaney: ‘Between my finger and my thumb the computer programme rests. I'll dig with it.’ Of course I am not implying that there isn't a need for new excavations. Just as poets need potatoes, simulation models need good archaeological data and both must continue to be dug from the ground.

The simulation model, which I see as a methodological tool, will follow the idealised encounter foraging system I proposed above. It can be divided into three components: a model for the hunting process, a model for the post-glacial environment and a model for decision making by the hunters.

In chapter 5 I have evaluated the current evidence for subsistence and intensification of production by third- and second-millennium be cultures in south-east Spain. In spite of differences of opinion as to the form and scale of such intensification, models have been proposed to account for its causes and consequences. Such models relate intensification to five other variables: system scale, technological innovation, complexity, interaction and integration. As we have seen in chapter 1, such variables have been argued to be of importance in the emergence of complex cultures in the Aegean Bronze Age and elsewhere. How important were such variables, and their interaction one with another, in south-east Spain?

In the course of the next four chapters, I will try to answer this question by evaluating five models of the causes and consequences of intensification in south-east Spain. In part, this evaluation process is concerned with theoretical arguments, which place emphasis on the form and scale of the variables under discussion. Equally important is the degree to which we can give meaning to these variables in the archaeological record. Models are of little use if they are theoretically acceptable, but empirically impotent. As indicated in chapter 1, we look to find predictions in the model as to the form, scale and relationship (causal? temporal?) between variables. Ultimately we have to recognise that no single model is right or wrong, but that theoretical and empirical arguments highlight their individual strengths and weaknesses, and their potential for future research.

This is a book about the later prehistory of one part of Europe, the west Mediterranean, with the main attention devoted to three provinces in south-east Spain. These provinces are recognised by European prehistorians as containing one of the key sequences for the study of the emergence of more complex cultures in the third and second millennia be. The emergence of these cultures is placed within the wider context of contemporary cultures in Spain and Portugal, and in other parts of the west Mediterranean. While aiming to understand the specific details of cultural change within south-east Spain, I am convinced of the need to place such localised analyses within a wider comparative context, and to examine the emergence of complexity as a general anthropological problem.

My interest in the prehistory of south-east Spain was aroused during my student days by reading Colin Renfrew's (1967a) critique of diffusionist explanations for the development of Copper and Bronze Age cultures in this area. Such an explanation had been expressed most recently in the English language in Beatrice Blance's Edinburgh doctoral thesis and in her subsequent publications (1960, 1961, 1964). Diffusionism also had a central role in the synthesis of Iberian prehistory published by Savory (1968). If, as Renfrew argued, diffusionist explanations were flawed, both theoretically and empirically, then there was considerable scope for research into the autonomous decelopment of complexity.

This book has been written with three aims in mind. First, it is a detailed study of the later prehistory of south-east Spain, an area acknowledged since the 1880s as one of importance for our understanding of the emergence of cultural complexity in Europe to the north and west of the Aegean. Although the data on Copper and Bronze cultures in south-east Spain have been cited in a number of recent syntheses of European prehistory (e.g. Champion et al. 1984; Coles and Harding 1979; Whittle 1985; Barker 1985), there has been no major analysis of the data in their own right. Lull's impressive and detailed analysis of the Argaric Bronze Age in south-east Spain (1983) comes the nearest to a full synthesis, while Gilman and Thornes (1985) adopt a finer focus (on subsistence intensification) but over a longer time depth (from Neolithic to Later Bronze Age). In writing this book I am trying to combine the strengths of these two books, taking the entire later prehistoric sequence and presenting our current understanding of the archaeological record. As will become clear, there are contradictory opinions about this understanding, and there are many problems with the reliability of the archaeological data. I have tried to use these opinions and problems productively, suggesting areas for future research. Thus I regard this book as a way of clearing the decks, and signposting what I believe to be directions for research over the next decade.

As Binford has reminded us recently, our research should begin with the facts of the archaeological record and then move towards an interpretation of those facts (1983a). Our data are organised along the dimensions of time and space and predominantly by criteria of similarity and association. For European prehistorians from Childe to Clarke this organisation of the archaeological record has resulted in the creation of a hierarchy of entities, from attributes and types to assemblages, cultures, groups of cultures and technocomplexes (Childe 1956; Clarke 1968). As with all typological constructs, there has been debate over the utility and particularly the meaning of these entities. While north American scholars have concentrated attention on the validity of the type concept, European archaeologists have focused on the culture concept. Once the archaeological record had been organised into ‘cultures’, the interpretation of that record in terms of continuities and changes of ‘cultures’ could begin.

We have seen in chapter 2 that Iberian prehistoric cultures, like many others in Europe, were interpreted in a normative, ethnic framework. Recent debate has exposed the difficulties involved in this approach: it assumes that cultural similarity is a direct measure of human interaction; it obscures intra–cultural variability, for which an explanation is equally important; it involves methodological problems in defining cultural boundaries; and it assumes that the archaeological record is a ‘past tense’ of the ethnographic record.

The use of absolute dating methods has taken longer to develop in Iberia than in many other parts of western Europe. When I submitted my doctoral dissertation in 1975, there were four times the number of published radiocarbon dates from France as from Iberia, while Italy (which is half the size of Iberia) possessed twice the number of dates. While there has been a notable number of dates published since 1975 (e.g. Almagro Gorbea and Fernández-Miranda 1978), there remain particular problems with their interpretation. Many sites are ‘dated’ by single determinations. Few, if any, areas can be claimed to have detailed absolute chronologies, although some finer subdivisions have become possible. For north-east Spain the details of a fifth- and fourth-millennium Neolithic sequence are becoming visible (e.g. Guilaine et al. 1982), as is also the case in Andalucía (e.g. Pellicer and Acosta 1982). Although Neolithic material outside of megalithic tombs is known from southern Portugal (e.g. Spindler 1981), there is no stratigraphic or absolute dating evidence for the development of Neolithic cultures in this area. For south-east Spain a series of Bronze Age dates are published for the Argaric culture, as we shall see below.

Caveats such as these are important if absolute dates are to be used to test some of the arguments of the traditional framework outlined in chapter 2.

Comparison lies at the heart of the social sciences. As archaeologists, we wish to understand the evolution of human cultures. Comparison of past cultures highlights order and pattern in the data, as well as variability, and both require explanation. From the point of view of the model of explanation outlined in chapter 1, comparison also enables us to assess the utility and comprehensiveness of our theories. A theory of the evolution of cultural complexity which applied only to one area would not be thought very successful. Similarly, a theory of cultural complexity which did not help us to understand those contexts in which complexity did not emerge would also be found wanting.

In chapter 1, I summarised arguments which analysed the interrelationships between six variables (intensification, system scale, technological innovation, complexity, interaction and integration) in the evolution of complex societies. In chapters 5, 7 and 8, I have tried to operationalise and measure these variables for the Copper and Bronze Ages of south-east Spain. This has focused attention on the strengths and weaknesses of the archaeological record of this area, and of the current explanations for that record. The aim of the present chapter is to compare the archaeological record of south-east Spain with that of other areas of Iberia and the west Mediterranean. Is south-east Spain the only area in which complex societies evolved before the emergence of the Etruscan state in the first millennium be?

The bulk of the discussion in this chapter relates to complexity in the later prehistory of south-east Spain, with much less space devoted to interaction and integration. Such an emphasis directly reflects the attention devoted by archaeologists to these three variables in this area, but even in the case of complexity there have been few systematic attempts to collect relevant archaeological data. Indeed the stimulus provided by such attempts illustrates the potential of social archaeology in south-east Spain. Past social organisation is not out of reach of the archaeologist.

Complexity

According to Blanton et al. (1981, p. 21), complexity can be defined by ‘the extent to which there is functional differentiation among societal units’. This differentiation can be either horizontal (‘functional differentiation among parts of equivalent rank in a system’) or vertical (‘rank differences can be seen among functionally diverse parts’). Such functional differentiation may be political or economic, and sometimes both, and what begins as horizontal specialisation may be elevated to vertical specialisation (e.g. where craft specialists are given higher status).

All of the interpretations about the causes and consequences of intensification in south-east Spain adopt positions on the degree of complexity in the Copper and Bronze Ages. All accept the existence of social inequality, and for most this provides the main stimulus for research into this area of prehistoric Europe.

Given the preoccupation of traditional archaeology with the more ‘tangible’ aspects of the archaeological record, we might expect there to be better, more reliable, data for these two variables than for the others to be discussed in the next chapter. How far is this the case, and how far does that archaeological record help us to evaluate the models presented in chapter 6?

System scale

According to the discussion in chapter 1, an increase in the scale of a cultural system can be related to changes in integration and complexity. Essentially, an increase in scale poses problems for information communication, and these problems are overcome by an increase in organisational complexity. In the models outlined in chapter 6 population growth is used as the main measure for system scale, along, in some cases, with the expansion of a culture from its original area of development.

A major problem, as has already been mentioned in chapter 1, is the low level of spatial and temporal resolution with which changes in size and scale can be measured. Inter-regional comparison of changes in site numbers and densities is made difficult by the rarity of systematic surveys. Where surveys have led to the discovery of new sites (e.g. in the Baja Alpujarra and Campo de Dalías – Suárez et al. 1986), and have filled gaps in the distribution of sites, there is no explicit discussion of survey methods and intensity.

In chapter 6 I summarised five models of the intensification of production and the emergence of increased cultural complexity in south-east Spain, principally in the third and second millennia be. Two of these models (Chapman, Mathers) had their basis in ecological and systems theory, while the other three (Gilman, Lull, Ramos) used Marxian theory. The question then arises as to how we can evaluate these models, one against another. An alternative question would be to ask how we can take advantage of these differing models to generate research capable of increasing our knowledge of the archaeological record, so that the ideas contained in these models can be subjected to some form of empirical evaluation? The existence of competing models is thus seen as a strength, rather than a weakness, of current work on southeast Spanish prehistory. Such models may be criticised on the basis of weaknesses in their theoretical assumptions and structure, and on the basis of the comprehensiveness, predictiveness, efficiency and accuracy (Clarke 1972, p. 4) with which they can be applied to the archaeological record. In the discussion which follows, I will make some initial points about theories and assumptions, before summarising the empirical evidence for the variables which have been analysed in chapters 7–8. At the same time the implications of this evidence for the different models will be raised and directions for future research outlined.

I have chosen to begin my discussion of processes leading to cultural change in southeast Spain with intensification for two main reasons. First we have already seen in chapter 1 that intensification of production is a variable which has received much attention in archaeology and anthropology in the debate about the origins of cultural complexity. Was it a cause or a consequence of population growth? Did it promote management or conflict? Was it a response to environmental stress or an independent, socially motivated strategy? Given this wide concern, and the extensive discussion intensification has received in Aegean archaeology, it is an obvious starting-point for any comparative study of complexity.

Secondly, intensification of production has already been identified by archaeologists working in Iberia as a critical variable in the emergence of Copper and Bronze Age cultures (e.g. Chapman 1975, 1978; Gilman 1976, 1981; Gilman and Thornes 1985; Lull 1983, 1984; Mathers 1984a; Ramos 1981; Harrison 1985). Opinions differ as to the stimulus leading to this intensification, the precise form it took and its social consequences. In some cases the models proposed are statements of faith and have yet to be subjected to testing. In this context a clear evaluation of the existing data, and their limitations, is required. What was the nature and scale of local intensification? How does the evidence for this intensification process correlate in time and space with that for changes in culture, society and population?

The initial reaction against what has been castigated as ‘traditional archaeology’ was best articulated among the Chicago-based students of Lewis Binford in the early 1960s. Since then many archaeologists have contributed to the debate and polemical positions have become commonplace. Binford himself has recently referred to this phenomenon as ‘sociological posturing’ (1983b, p. 108). Given this diversity of positions within theoretical archaeology, it is important to specify precisely what I consider to be the assumptions of traditional archaeology embodied in the interpretation of Iberian prehistory. They may be summarised as follows:

1. (1) Throughout the prehistoric occupation of the Iberian peninsula the major stimulus for cultural change derived from areas such as the Dordogne (for the Upper Palaeolithic), north Africa (for the Upper Palaeolithic, the Epipalaeolithic and the Early Neolithic) or the eastern Mediterranean (mainly for the Neolithic and Bronze Ages). The assumption for the Holocene period, as for other areas of Europe, was that people were innately uninventive outside a focal area of the Near East.

2. (2) Within the peninsula this stimulus focused upon a restricted number of ‘nuclear’ areas, from which cultures or cultural traits diffused into other regions.

3. (3) Cultural assemblages are viewed as static collections of artefact-types whose degree of formal similarity reflects directly their degree of interrelationship. Similarity directly measures interaction. Thus the closer the formal similarities exhibited, whether considered individually or additively, between two or more assemblages, so the closer the social distance between them is thought to be.

4. […]