Life and death in the Bronze Age of the NW of Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

This paper examines funerary practices and contexts in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula during the Bronze Age in order to chart the different responses to death. These practices, understood as “social metaphors”, will serve as a basis for our interpretation of the different ways in which societies engage with the environment. The burial sites and associated rites are also analyzed as forms of legitimization and territorial possession, which function through the creation of “a sense of place”, able thereafter to transmit memory and contribute to the construction of the group identity.