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Research about protohistoric demography estimates the population in a settlement through two main methods: one of them is based in the calculation of the dwelling space; the other is based in the number of houses. The first method implies an egalitarian distribution of space among the inhabitants of a settlement; the second one attributes a constant number of people per house, which means a major surface per person in the bigger houses. Both methods are feasible, but none of them is completely satisfactory, as they don’t take into account the possibility of an unequal distribution of space or the coexistence of households of different size in the same settlement.

From a critical reflection on these methods, I propose the analyse of the use of domestic space as a social indicator, and as a basis to hypothesise about the composition of family structure in the protohistory as well as the changes it suffers through time.