‘Patriarchs’ and ‘Ladies of Power’: Gender and Social Transformation in Early Peasant Societies in Western Iberia

The recent evolution in our perception of gender has influenced the way we model the social transformations of early peasant societies (from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age). In Iberia, more precisely the western part thereof, structural changes between the Neolithic-Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age brought about changes in women’s statuses, such as what at the time was described as ‘the change into patriarchy.’ As a consequence of the ‘empirical revolution’ made possible by the data resulting from preventive archaeological research carried out over the last quarter of a century for the construction of the Alqueva dam and its adjacent irrigation systems, several changes occurred mainly in respect of the models of social complexity and gender relations in early peasant societies and, in particular, the transition between the so-called Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age (EBA). Here, we discuss the available models for Western Iberia (taking into account the perceived relationships with what goes on in European archaeological thinking) before the Mediterranean arrivals of the Early Iron Age forever change the picture.