Community, Identity, and Conflict: Iron Age Warfare in the Iberian Northwest
Author(s)
Sastre, Ines
Abstract
A multigenerational case study of an elite Untouchable family reveals the problems of integration, “passing,This paper proposes a new view of conflict in European Iron Age societies: considering isolationism as an alternative to warfare. Study of the castros (fortified settlements) of the Iberian Northwest suggests the organization of production as a main explanatory element in the emergence of identities based on exclusion and the imposition of communal structures of power. The relationship between these communities must have been one of conflict, and the unequal productive success of domestic units and the requirement of external marriage interchanges created realms of interaction in which internal conflict surely arose. These tendencies were kept in check by controlling settlement growth. Although a conflict prone situation is documented in the archaeological record, there is no evidence that warfare as an endemic reality created groups of warriors. Warfare related activity in these Iron Age societies was neither heroic nor hierarchical. Warfare did not determine the form of society but rather was related to the productive and reproductive organization of the societies that engaged in it.” and cultural affirmation in the development and democratization process. As a nonvisible minority it is possible to facilitate integration in Indian urban areas by hiding caste, while affirmative action programs facilitate upward mobility at the cost of having to proclaim Untouchable caste identity. These contradictory imperatives illustrate the difficulties facing elite Untouchables in achieving emancipation.
