El suroeste hispano en la Turdetania atlánticadinámica poblacional y evolución cultural (ss. VI-III a.C.)

Abstract

The general goal of the present work is the reconstruction of the historical process of the society that inhabited the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula in the II Iron Age by looking at the diachronic evolution of the territory in terms of social, cultural, economic, political, and religious aspects. This has been achieved by carrying out an analysis of three distinct levels: the micro-level, that is, the study of each of the settlements from a diachronic point of view; the meso-level, focused on the Tierra Llana of Huelva; and the macro-level, with the establishment of parallelisms in the study of Turdetania. Taking into consideration all the sources available for us -literary, numismatic, and archaeological- and extracting all the information possible from them, we were able to study the following specific aspects in depth. One of the main topics is the new hypothesis that would explain the so-called "crisis of the 6th century B.C.", based on the effects of an epidemic outbreak of falciparum malaria, since all the necessary conditions for the propagation of such an outbreak were met in the southwest of the peninsula: propitious environmental factors, existence of vector and host, an important ploughing of the soil in immediately preceding moments, demographic increase followed by a high immigration rate, and poor health conditions. The reasons above could explain the dissimilar impact in the different areas, regardless of their economic activity or their location, since that would depend on the level of development of the disease. The recovery from it in 50 years coincided in time with the changes that took place in the southwest of the peninsula in the 6th century B.C. However, to this indirect evidence we should add the appearance of a genetic mutation, called thalassemia, the propagation of which is related to malaria outbreaks or epidemics, to which it is immune. It is also possible to distinguish different focuses of expansion as a response to the different mutated genes, which indicate a different response to malaria in the past. In this case, the Western Mediterranean focus had a different mutation to the one of Italy and Greece, which has been related to the expansion from the north of Africa to Sicily, Sardinia and the Iberian Peninsula during the 1st Millennium B.C. We can delimit a bit further the expansion of thalassemia if we focus on the Sardinian area in the 6th century B.C., which matches, chronologically speaking, the evidence compatible with the beta thalassemia of the osseous rests that were found in a grave in the necropolis of Gadir; Another important contribution is the change in the settlement pattern that takes places in the 5 and 4 centuries B.C. in the southwest of the peninsula, and which reached its summit in the 4th century B.C., a key century in the Iron II in the peninsula. From this century, we are deeply interested in explaining the ethnic complexity (as the Punic factor adds to the already complicated situation of the period), and the evidence of it in the territory or in cultural manifestations. The development of what happened in the Tierra Llana of Huelva is part of the same general process that affected, in a similar way, the southwest of the peninsula, where the coastal settlements devoted to the exploitation of salting products and salt mines became common. This activity was enormously intensified in the area of Cadiz, although we suspect that in the neighbouring coast of Huelva the vestiges of places devoted to the production of salting products in pre-Roman times will multiply as the research moves forward. All these changes could have been part of the general policy in the Punic territories at the time, the main goal of which had to do with the intensification of the commerce in its western area. There can be no doubt of the Punic nature of the military camps located, the number of which is very likely to increase in the next years as a consequence of a change in the way of dealing with the studies of the territory during the 2nd Iron Age in the Southwest of the Peninsula. Likewise, the vestiges preserved of the presence of the Barcid in the territory are identified, especially in the cities, where they focus their efforts. Moreover, the remnants of the 2nd Punic War in the Tierra Llana are relatec with the military processes that took place, on a broader scale, in the context of the fight between Romans anc Punics in the Iberian Peninsula, the result of which brought an end to the to the Barcid's ambitious politica programme in the south of it.