Abstract:

Research into the Iberian culture has been particularly intensive in recent decades, with extensive surveys and a number of large-scale excavations. In the coastal area of present-day Catalonia surveys have attested the existence of complex settlement patterns with different categories of sites, while excavations have contributed to our understanding of their internal functioning and their position within settlement systems. The information available on the different settlement categories suggests that the largest sites acted as the capitals of polities corresponding to some of the ethnic territories mentioned in the ancient written sources. Their rather limited sizes and hierarchical settlement structures mean these territories must be considered as city-states, whereas other areas of the Iberian culture (such as inland Catalonia) were organized into less centralized, heterarchic forms, occasionally with large territorial states.