The Bronze Age in the Lands of Antequera: on the Wake of a Powerful Past

Antequera is home to a major megalithic site, listed in the UNESCO World Heritage List since July 2016. Although going back to the first half of the 19th cent. CE, research on this site has hitherto failed to provide a thorough synthesis of the settlement dynamics in the Later Prehistory of the surrounding region, the Lands of Antequera. In line with the topic of this book, in this contribution a review of the currently available evidence for Bronze Age Antequera is presented. This is a follow-up of a similar paper dealing with the Copper Age, published some years ago (García Sanjuán et al. 2016). To achieve this review, a summary description of the available empirical evi dence is first made; then, the main trends of that period in terms of settle ment patterns, economic practices and funerary ideology are discussed; fi nally, the resulting conclusions are put into a more general perspective from the view point of the social and cultural dynamics of southern Iberian Bronze Age. The resulting picture is that the Bronze Age at the Lands of Antequera appears to have been visibly marked by a phenomenon of cultural continuity pivoting around the persistent infl uence of the magnifi cent megalithic monuments that dominated the social landscape in the 4th and 3rd mill. BCE.