The urban caleidoscope in the Meseta “celtic” world

Abstract

Throughout the first millennium BC two processes took place in the Spanish Northern Meseta: a process of increasing population and a trend towards nucleated settlements. Both processes led to the emergence of the big Celtiberian, Vaccean and Vetton cities, well known in the archaeological record and, at least some of them, by the written historical sources. The process was not lineal and homogeneous, but rather a mosaiclike one, with rhythms and settlement forms different for each region of the Northern Meseta. In the end, the scene shown by the developing process conducting to the first urbanization at the end of the Iron Age is presented in this paper as a kaleidoscopic entity, changing in space and time, with its affinities and own features.