Women, residential patterns and early social complexity. From theory to practice in Copper Age Iberia
Marta Cintas-Peña, Leonardo García Sanjuán
Abstract
The relationship between residence, gender and mobility is central to the study of early social complexity. And \nyet, until recently, it was deemed as archaeologically intractable. The recent combination of strontium data and \ngenomics with other methods has opened up entirely new possibilities for the archaeological study of human \nmobility, but these advances are not without problems. Theoretical framing, empirical accuracy and data \ninterpretation remain controversial. In this paper we address the relationship between residence patterns, gender \nand mobility among early complex societies, combining both ethnographic and archaeological evidence. Our \napproach focuses on Chalcolithic Iberia, a period in which the stage for emerging social complexity was set. The \npossible existence of male-centered residential patterns and their possible connection with conflict, social \ncomplexity and gender inequalities is examined. The available data on strontium isotopes suggest women were \nmore frequently buried in places different from those where they grew up, which can be linked to bilocality \nbiased to patrilocality, especially in the so called ‘mega-sites’. While preliminary, this body of evidence opens up \nfresh lines of enquiry for the study of early complex societies, highlights the benefits of combining different kinds \nof evidence, and underlines the centrality of gender in the social analysis.