Género y edad en las necrópolis de la meseta norte durante la Edad del Hierro (siglos VI-II a. n. e.)

Abstract

The cemeteries of the meseta are essential to understanding the social organization of the communities of the 1st millennium BCE. The research tradition, dating back to the 18th century, has frequently attributed certain good graves to a gender or age group without the support of anthropological analyses. Since the 1980s such associations and the current stereotypes on which they based have come into question. Focusing on the cemeteries with greater information (Carratiermes, El Pradillo, Herreria III, La Yunta and Las Ruedas), this article proposes a bibliographic approach to the relationships between funerary objects and the biological features of the deceased. The sample comprises 245 individuals for the Early Iron Age (6th and 4th centuries BCE) and another 245 for the Late Iron Age (late 4th to 2nd BCE). The distribution of the population by sex and age is analyzed, considering the changes in the mortality curves. We also take gender into account by evaluating archaeological interpretations against the osteological data. Finally, the paper offers some keys on material culture changes, the absence of identity markers and the main axes of identitiy.