Session: #377

Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each

Since the end of the last millennium, the reflection on the processes of urbanization in the pre-Roman Mediterranean has recovered an important role in archaeological research. This has also stimulated new theoretical reflection on the definition of "urban" and on the role of urban settlements in the settlement networks.
At the same time, important archaeological surveys and extensive excavations conducted in the last decades in the area under study has revealed the existence of hierarchical settlement systems, which include settlements that, for different reasons, can be described as urban. These works, however, have also revealed the existence of a great diversity of specific situations, which invites a comparative analysis that may allow to go deeper into the definition of “urban” and the types of protohistoric towns in the area under study.
The proposed topics of discussion revolve around the causes of urbanization processes (technological changes, demographic growth, colonial relationships), the physical characteristics of the sites considered as urban (size, internal organization, structural complexity), the position of the latter within the population patterns (cities as centers of power, administration, exchange), symbolic functions of cities, craft specialization in relation to urbanization processes, sociological diversity as a defining trait of “urban”, etc.

Iberia, Mediterranean Gaul, Protohistory, Urbanization

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Archaeology Professor Joan Sanmartí (Spain) ^1,2

Professor Rosa Plana (France) ³
Research Professor Carme Belarte (Spain) ^4,5
DR. Jaume Noguera (Spain) ¹