The Chalcolithic site of Valencina de la Concepción in Seville was permanently occupied for a thousand years, between 3300 and 2150 BCE, by a community of several thousand inhabitants who organised themselves in an egalitarian manner and reached a high level of economic sustainability based on cooperation and diversification.

This is the conclusion of a research team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) that has analysed 635 macrolithic tools recovered from the northern part of the site. The study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, rethinks previous interpretations, which considered Valencina a purely ritual or temporary meeting place, and reinforces its character as a complex and long-lasting settlement.

Researchers from the Autonomous University of Madrid, the University of Würzburg, Germany, and the German Archaeological Institute Madrid also participated in the study.

Valencina de la Concepción, with a total surface area of 450 hectares, is the most extensive site in Europe from the third millennium BCE. Despite a growing amount of information on the megalithic tombs of the necropolis and its concentric graves, little is known about another area, the settlement, which occupies ca. 200 hectares, and about the economic practices and social relations of the communities that frequented it. This study allowed researchers to understand the economic activities that were carried out throughout the occupation of the settlement and to re-evaluate its socio-economic organisation.

The artefacts analysed come from habitation and production units, such as huts, workshops and pits arranged in a circular formation, as well as from the material found inside the ditches. The analysis reflects an economy based on domestic and subsistence activities, with a great productive diversity, which included the processing of grains, plant fibres, animals, leather, metals, stone and other organic and inorganic materials.

The activities were maintained in a stable manner throughout the entire occupation of the Copper Age, between 5,300 and 5,150 years ago. “This indicates a permanent occupation of the settlement. The only observable changes between the three major phases of occupation could be due to the density of occupation of the area,” says Marina Eguíluz, predoctoral researcher at the Department of Prehistory of the UAB and first author of the study.

The great variety of work identified and the fact that no accumulation of surpluses has been detected suggests an organisational model based on a cooperative and diversified economy. This productive model, in combination with a basically egalitarian organisation, would have allowed the population, probably made up of several thousand inhabitants, to be economically sustainable over the course of a millennium.

“The observed continuity highlights the sustainability of the socioeconomic model present during the Copper Age, based on cooperativism and the lack of accumulation and centralisation, and differentiated from later models of productive intensification. This reinforces the proposal to define the most developed communities of the Copper Age in the south of the Iberian Peninsula as cooperative societies of abundance, a form of social organisation that deeply questions the traditional evolutionary models, based on hierarchical and power relations between bands, tribes, prefectures or states”, emphasises Roberto Risch, researcher of Prehistory at the UAB and coordinator of the study.

Artefacts until now associated with ritualism

Until now, the interpretation of Valencina de la Concepción has focused mainly on its necropolis and on specific parts of the settlement. Above all, the objects analysed were related to funerary practices, products of distant origin and the specialised craft production of pottery, metallurgy and copper. Stone materials were previously interpreted as evidence of ritualism due to their reduced and fragmented nature, and thus have received little attention as tools for subsistence and daily activities.
The artefacts analysed in this study were recovered from excavations carried out at Cerro de la Cabeza and the Pabellón Cubierto, included in the Valencina Nord project developed by the German Archaeological Institute of Madrid, the University of Würzburg and the Autonomous University of Madrid, with the collaboration of the UAB.

The study also shows that the tools were intensively used and the materials were reused. The materials were obtained from areas located within a maximum radius of 30 kilometres, which points to a local and regional management of lithic resources.
The methodology included the technological and functional analysis of the artefacts, as well as the macroscopic identification of raw materials, in order to understand aspects such as origin, production, use and discard, as well as radiocarbon dating and stratigraphic observations. In some of the items, samples of organic origin were collected, which have allowed a better understanding of their function.

The study carried out by UAB researchers opens the door to new comparative studies with other Chalcolithic sites focused on macrolithic artefacts.