Description
In Peñalosa we can find the best-studied town of the Bronze Age of the Peninsular South, belonging to the Argar Culture and example of the socio-economic reality of this society.
Located in the municipality of Baños de la Encina, the argaric village of Peñalosa has been a reference in the research of the Bronze of Alto Guadalquivir. It sits on a slate slate in the form of a tongue, with two large slopes of strong slopes limiting to the north with the Rumblar River and to the south with the Salsipuas stream. The waters of the Rumbar reservoir now bathe the structures of this argaric village.
The town belongs to the Argar Culture, which was developed during the Bronze Age by the provinces of Almería, Murcia, Granada and part of those of Jaén and Alicante, and was inhabited about 400 years, from the mid-19th century a. C. until the mid-15th century a. C.
The site is a fortified village with houses built with slate on the hill and along its slopes on terraces, as steps, connected with each other by narrow streets and corridors, no significant architectural differences between the different terraces are seen. Within the village there are several different areas: on the top of the hill a fortified area with three houses connected to each other by the aforementioned corridors; generating a structured and organized area. On the north side, three natural and artificial terraces are alternated, interconnected with corridors, and in which houses are distributed. The village also has a large tank in the lower part that would collect the water from the rain and powerful defensive bastions that delimited the village. A characteristic feature of this culture was the interiors within the houses themselves, accompanying the deceased with joules corresponding to the social range they had within the village.
The main economic activity of the population was copper mining, especially the Azurite and Malakita, exploiting the mining wealth of the valley. The entire mining process has been documented: mining, reduction, casting and manufacturing of tools and ingots. Other economic activities such as looms and cereal processing, especially barley, have also been documented.
Socially, there are differences between the burials between those on the middle and upper terraces and those on the bottom; in addition, most burials on the upper terrace are located in exclusively funerary spaces, which has led to the hypothesis that it was a very hierarchical community, with a militarized elite (upper terrace) to which the mass of peasants - free warriors (middle terrace) would be subordinate and on whose base there would be a population layer in a servile state attached to the elite (lower terrace).
