The origins of social inequality in prehistoric Europe: rituals and monuments to control wealth in Bronze Age of La Mancha

Abstract

The studies of Professor A. Gilman and his team, carried out since the eighties on the settlement of eastern La Mancha, have served to interpret the landscape and society of this geographical area during recent prehistory. His work has allowed us to advance knowledge about the role that the control of territory, water and capital played throughout the process of the emergence of social inequality in prehistoric Europe. With this work as a foundation, recent contributions from the fields of paleohydrogeology, paleoecology and archaeoastronomy provide insights into the solutions that Chalcolithic communities adopted with the arrival of the environmental crisis caused by the 4.2 ka cal BP climate event. As a means of legitimizing, controlling, and protecting their access to these wells, they monumentalized the landscape and created a solar cult linked to ancestral rites. Complex ceremonial centers with burial mounds and sun-oriented corridors were built on strategic locations and were used for at least a millennium, as in the case of Castillejo del Bonete (Terrinches, Ciudad Real). This work presents the current state of knowledge about the Bronze Age of La Mancha, an exceptional culture that Professor A. Gilman helped to define.