The Use of Landscape as a Resource and Socio-Cultural Change on the Iberian Peninsula

Shaping and organising of landscapes as resource assemblages are in the focus of this project. An interdisciplinary cultural-anthropological approach is used to carry out closely linked archaeological and anthropological research on the handling of landscapes, their perception and the use of resources and the related specific socio-cultural dynamics, applying a long term perspective. As during the first phase, a special interest is in the contrast between the agriculturally favourable zones in the coastal South and the more arid mountainous and inland regions of the Iberian Peninsula. According to recently won insights, a much more regionally differentiated picture became visible for the Chalcolithic, than the previously assumed marked but rather general differences in economic and settlement patterns between the southern coastal area and the interior highlands. For the subsequent Bronze Age period an increasing specialisation into a sedentary, predominantly farming live-style on one hand, and on the other hand a mobile way of living relying more on herding is postulated. Because this is seen as an adaption to specific environmental conditions an interdisciplinary regional study will analyse the Guadalquivir Valley as well as the neighbouring Sierra Morena. Interaction with the landscape, the related ResourceComplexes and the associated socio-cultural dynamics will be studied from archaeological and cultural anthropological perspectives, applying a wide range of methods. This is done in closely related case studies working on prehistoric (especially Bronze Age), historical and contemporary sources. Subsequently results will be discussed against the background of current cultural anthropological research on this topic. This aims at 1) examining in an interdisciplinary way how landscapes were organised, shaped and controlled as resource assemblages, 2) analysing the socio-economic implications of the interaction between agrarian and pastoralist uses of landscapes, and 3) differentiating the social structures of sedentary versus those of mobile communities. In this way the innovative concept of resources developed by SFB 1070 – understanding resources as socially and culturally defined constructs and processes – is used to challenge traditional macro-historical interpretations and data is viewed from a different perspective. This interdisciplinary project will serve to further develop the theoretical framework of the collaborate research centre by its diachronic analysis of complementary regional studies.