Resumo
Advances in Early Medieval Archaeology in the past decades have been enormous and it is now capable of constructing complex historic frameworks to explain the important processes that happened after the dismantling of the Roman Empire. However, scholars have paid little attention to social inequality as one of the main causes that explain those changes between the 4th and the 8th centuries. In this paper, and in coherence with the rest of the book, settlement patterns and social organization of sites will be analysed in order to understand social inequality in post-imperial times. For such a purpose, a space in the central part of the Duero Valley, in the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula, will be used as a case study to explore the possibilities and difficulties of analysing social inequality through settlement patterns. Previously, some theoretical and methodological remarks will be made on the concepts of ?inequality? and the historiography of settlement pattern analysis in the Iberian Peninsula within a wider theoretical frame.
Palabras chave
Early Medieval Archaeology. Social structuring. Geographic-based analysis. Peasant societies. Archaeological theory.