Fortified settlement with bastions
Asentamiento fortificado con bastiones y fortines
- Date
- c. 3200 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Los Millares, Santa Fe de Mondújar, Almería, Spain
- Credited to
- Los Millares culture (Chalcolithic of south-east Iberia)
- Field
- Tools
What it is
A 5-hectare settlement with four lines of walls with semicircular bastions, outer forts, a ditch and a necropolis of 80 tholoi, alongside copper workshops. The first complex fortification in western Europe, showing a society hierarchised around metal and water.
Zambujal (Portugal) and Vila Nova de São Pedro show similar fortifications in the same horizon.
What it led to
- Concentration of population and control of resources (copper, water, pasture) in south-east Iberia
- Bastioned military architecture anticipating that of the Bronze Age (El Argar)
- Collective tombs with unequal grave goods: lineages and rank
Built on
Made possible
- Argaric fortifications
- Mediterranean bastioned wall