Polynuclear settlements and urban resilience between Late Bronze Age and Iron Age in the Iberian southeast: new data from the site of Castellar de Librilla

Abstract

In the last phase of the Late Bronze Age, a series of hilltop settlements, characterized by a first dispersed planning, were created in the Iberian southeast. This planning turned into a polynuclear urbanism system and a significant socio-political organisation that continues during the Iron Age. In this article, we examine the development of this type of occupation pattern on different sites throughout the Segura basin and we present new data from the site of Castellar de Librilla to deepen in the development of its intra-urban spatial structure. The new habitat areas detected in recent archaeological surveys, some of them delimited by important defensive systems, allow us to observe the transformations in its internal configuration from the Late Bronze Age to Iberian Period. These episodes of urban restructuring show the adaptation processes that these polynuclear settlements developed within the framework of the changing territorial and cultural dynamics of the region during the 1st millennium BC.