Villavieja (Fuentes de Cesna-Algarinejo, Granada). New contributions to the Cooper Age walled sites in the Subbaetic Andalusia

Abstract

Interpretation of the sociocultural dynamics of the communities from the III millennium B.C. in the mountainous region of the Subbaetic System in the southern Iberian Peninsula have agreed in the marginal perspective, belonging to a social and geographical geographic periphery whose center is in the Southeast and the valley of the Guadalquivir. The recent interventions in two new walled enclosures of the Copper Age culminate an investigation that had started on its link with the intensive use of lithic resources, allowing to approach this dynamic from new documentary bases. Starting from the analysis of Villavieja (Algarinejo, Granada), its genesis, development and collapse, we analyzed the knowledge involved in the erection of its exceptionally well-preserved stone wall in extension and height. This fact allows us to address the applied technology that, together with Pedriza de Cartuja (Montillana-Colomera, Granada) within the same mountainous region, allow us to begin to glimpse new perspectives that draw a more complex picture to traditional interpretations of megalithic populations from the Subbaetic mountainous region in the Southern Iberian Peninsula.