Approaches to ethnoarchaeology in the Guadiana Menor valley (Jaén)

Abstract

Ethnoarchaeology has not been employed very often in Spain, probably because we do not recognise any link with our remote past. However, we think that some marginal areas with limited resources have maintained a quite similar way of life at least from the Iron Age until the recent past. Oral evidence given by the people that lived under those conditions is of great help in order to understand and compare the organisation and use of the landscape through time. In this paper we begin the study of an area centered on the Guadiana Menor River Valley, using archaeological data (Iron Age), and medieval and recent written sources.