Santa Justa(after Golçalves, 1989)
Location: Alcoutim municipality, Faro district, Algarve, South Portugal)
Chronology: Chalcolithic
Bibliographic references: Gonçalves, 1989.
Excavated during the late seventies and the eighties of the XX century, Santa Justa is a small walled enclosure located on a hilltop. Presenting a general ellipsoidal plan, it roughly measures 20m by 30 m.
Initially, it was an enclosure with to opposite gates, located in the extreme tops of the ellipse. Then, several phases of construction were detected, providing the structures of bastions, wall reinforcements and the closing of one gate and strengthening of the other.
Structures interpreted as huts were detected inside, but also outside the walls.
Metallurgic activities were detected inside and, because of the size, the site was interpreted as a “fortified farm” of farmers and metallurgists of the 3rd millennium BC.
Recently, in a materialistic approach (Morán e Parreira, 2009), the site was seen as a response to a need of protection of an elite interests and products. This elite would control through ideological coercion, and not through violence (the solution that historical materialism found to deal with symbolism), the common people of the community and would present itself as an assurance of social stability. In this context of power display, the walled enclosures such as Santa Justa would, not just reinforce, but also symbolically express that political power and prestige.
Santa Justa became one example of what historical materialistic approach calls “symbolic euphemism”: control, not through direct coercion, but through ideological persuasion and deception. Every symbolic meaning is at the service of a social strategy of power to sustain social inequality.
A theoretical elaboration that, somehow, seems to rises above the available empirical data.
Bibliographic references: Morán, H. e Parreira, R. (2009), “La exhibición del poder en el Megalistismo del Suroeste Peninsular: tres casos de studio en el extreme sur de Portugal”, Cuadernos de Prehistoria de la Universidad de Granada, 19, p.139-162.
"Every symbolic meaning is at the service of a social strategy of power to sustain social inequality.
ReplyDeleteA theoretical elaboration that, somehow, seems to rises above the available empirical data."
Does Man History counts as empirical data?
History is not data. It is data interpretation.
ReplyDeleteWell, it is data for historiography (the History of written History).
But you know what I meant. Although post processualism is currently accused of not paying attention to empirical data; accused of not “proving”; that is quite untrue for most cases (that take empirical data seriously). And in fact, many of the functionalist or materialistic statements are not that well supported by empirical data. A large hole in the ground is a “silo” without the need of demonstration that it was a “silo”, and then a lot of conclusions are taken and assumed as demonstrated. Is this kind of axiomatic way of rezoning that characterizes some theoretical propositions that pretend to be more scientific and well “grounded” than others. But they are not so different in that matter.