Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo - Böcker

This book presents an overview of the results of the research project DESPAMED funded by the Spanish Minister of Economy and Competitiveness. The aim of the book is to discuss the theoretical challenges posed by the study of social inequality and social complexity in early medieval peasant communities in North-western Iberia. Traditional approaches have defined these communities as poor, simple and even nomadic, in the framework of a self-sufficient economy that prioritised animal husbandry over agriculture. This picture has radically changed over the last couple of decades as a result of important research on the archaeology of peasantry and the critical analysis of ninthand tenth-century documentary evidence that show the complexity of these rural societies. These new records are discussed in the light of a new research agenda centred on the analysis of the emergence of villages, the formation of local elites, the creation of socio-political networks and the role of identities in the legitimation of local inequalities. The nine chapters of this book explore the potential and the limits of the archaeological record to tackle social inequality in rural communities. Those considerations have a wider theoretical and methodological potential and are applicable to other regions and chronologies. The different chapters explore local societies through different methodologies and approaches such as food, settlement patterns, social exclusion, consumption patterns and social practices. In addition, the book introduces some of the most relevant topics studied currently by Iberian Medieval archaeologists, which are not always accessible to an international audience.

This book aims to provide a summary of the current archaeological framework for investigations of the Modern Age in the Basque Country, and to make proposals for developing these practices in the future.

Agrarian Archaeology in Northwestern Iberia is devoted to the archaeological study of the societies and agrarian landscapes of Northwestern Iberia in the longue durée. The book brings together, for the first time, the results of some of the main projects carried out in recent decades from off-site records providing a fresh perspective for the understanding of historical landscapes. The papers evaluate the ‘manure hypothesis’ and other variables that have influenced the formation of pottery carpets in several territories of the Ebro and Douro basins. The record is interpreted through critical integration with other historical, ethnographic and archaeological evidence. In thematic terms, the processes of early medieval colonization, the transformation of rural societies between the Roman and medieval periods, the agency of subaltern groups, the transformations of agrarian practices from a social perspective, and the morphology of agrarian landscapes from prehistory to the contemporary age are analysed. In addition, singularities in off-site records in non-Mediterranean spaces are considered. In summary, this volume introduces new topics, concepts and case studies useful for developing a multiproxy agrarian archaeology.

This volume brings together a large number of specialized studies and provides an interpretation of the site of San Julián de Aistra (Zalduondo-Araia, Álava) in terms of socio-political practices that define the main characteristics of early medieval local societies in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula.

This book explores the deep history of La Rioja's vineyard landscapes through archaeology at Torrentejo. It traces 5,000 years of human impact, from prehistoric settlements to wine industrialization, and reflects on how landscapes become heritage—what is remembered, and what is lost.