Resumen
The hoarding of metals is one of the most characteristic practices of the cultural dynamics documented during the Bronze Age in the Atlantic region, especially in its final stage. Hoarding is a human practice that consists in withdrawing specific objects from consumption and circulation spheres and intentionally hiding them in selected places. We believe that hoarding sites are meaningful to the cosmogonies of these communities. Therefore, deposits are a symbolic materialization of the relationship between humans and their landscape and we will focus in the northwest Iberian Late Bronze Age (LBA) hoards.However, the intrinsic characteristics of these findings present a challenge when attempting to analyse and recreate this cultural landscape. This is because most deposits are ancient discoveries, they appeared in not well-defined archaeological contexts and were often found by chance during farmwork. The aim of this paper is to review and systematise current contextual data about northwestern Iberian LBA hoards through a conceptual model system. This model will be integrated in a Geographic Information System (GIS), through which we will attempt to analyse the relationship between hoards, archaeological sites and landscapes. In doing so, we will try to improve our knowledge about the ways that LBA northwest Iberian Peninsula communities produced and reproduced their sociocultural landscapes.
Palabras clave
Hoards. Late Bronze Age. Cultural Landscapes. Iberian Peninsula. Atlantic Europe. Archaeometallurgy.