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Green objects of personal adornment were quite common among Neolithic and Copper Age groups in Western Europe, and variscite was one of the minerals that was most often used for such a purpose. This article presents the results of a series of archaeological campaigns designed to study the mines of Aliste and the ornament production loci of Quiruelas de Vidriales (both in the province of Zamora, Spain). We discovered that initially, during the fourth millennium calbc, variscite from Aliste was seldom used and the ornaments' production was dispersed, but that there was a significant shift during the third millennium calbc: ornament production intensified and became concentrated in the production sites of Quiruelas. We relate this transformation to the socioeconomic processes that developed in the Iberian Peninsula and the growth of supra-regional socio-technical artefact exchange networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Because of its great potential to provide data on contacts and overseas trade, ivory has aroused a great deal of interest since the very start of research into Iberian late prehistory. Research recently undertaken by the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid in collaboration with a number of other institutions has provided valuable contributions to the study of ivory in the Iberian Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. One of the archaeological sites that is contributing the most data for analysing ivory from the Copper Age in southern Iberia is Valencina de la Concepción (Seville), which is currently the focus of several debates on the development of social complexity. This article contributes to this line of research by providing new, unpublished evidence and by examining the significance of ivory craftsmanship in commercial, social, and ideological terms. It also assesses in greater detail the prominent part played by luxury ivory items as an expression of social status and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the southern Levant, the late fifth millennium to mid-fourth millennium BC--traditionally known as the Chalcolithic period--witnessed major cultural transformations in virtually all areas of society, most notably craft production, mortuary and ritual practices, settlement patterns, and iconographic and symbolic expression. A degree of regionalism is evident in material culture, but continuity in ceramic styles, iconographic motifs, and mortuary practices suggests a similar cultural outlook linking these sub-regions. Luxury items found in group mortuary caves provide good evidence for at least some inequality in access to exotic materials. The level of complexity in social organization, however, is still debated. Divergent interpretations of Chalcolithic socio-economic organization suggest that, with the large amount of new information now available, a reevaluation of the debate is due. In this article we synthesize the more recent evidence and weigh interpretations of processes that led to the widespread fundamental changes witnessed during the late fifth to early fourth millennium BC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This dissertation aims to characterise the Chalcolithic social organisation in the first half of the third millennium B.C. in Southern Portugal, and to analyse the economical and social transformations that took place in the second half of the same millennium. These were related to the decline of the Chalcolithic mode of production in South-Western Iberia. The complex, more centralised and hierarchical Bronze Age societies emerged from the collapse of that social model. The theoretical constructions draw on the empirical record from the archaeological excavations, directed by the author, in the settlement of Porto das Carretas (Mourão), that surmount the left bank of Guadiana River. The site has been contextualised both at local (Triângulo da Luz territory) and regional scale (South-Western Iberian Peninsula). From the several factors explaining the process of change, the intensification of production was chosen for this study, as associated with technological and economical innovations. As far as the dawn of the Chalcolithic is concerned, it is necessary to follow the positive effects of the Secondary Products Revolution on the rates of growth of all the indicators of social development, such as productivity, sendentism and population density. For the first half of the third millennium B.C., the author proposes a complex tribal organisation model, where the social hierarchy was maintained in the kinship structure. The crisis of the Chalcolithic society gave way, in the second half of the third millennium B.C., to more unequal and hierarchical societies (Bell Beaker period), along with the development of copper metallurgy (copper-arsenic alloys) and craft specialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]