ABSTRACT
When did states and stratified societies first appear in Iberia? The chapters in this volume have identified a number of issues that both enlighten and hinder the enterprise of identifying and characterizing such societies. This final chapter seeks to set that discussion within the broader European perspective. In searching for complexity at the European scale during the last four millennia b.c., the most promising candidates are unsurprisingly provided by the Mediterranean zone: Aegean societies of the second millennium b.c.; Classical Greece and Etruscan Italy in the first millennium b.c. In addition, a number of social or political entities appear to have formed around the periphery of the expanding Mediterranean world, and in direct contact with it. More diverse are the glimpses of complexity from Europe beyond the Mediterranean zone, and sometimes from relatively early periods: the massive Tripolye settlements of the Ukraine, the monumental centers of Neolithic northwest Europe, the richly furnished graves of the Varna cemetery, the highly planned settlements of the Biskupin group. What can they tell us about the emergence of social stratification in prehistoric Europe, and what light do they throw on contemporary Iberian developments?
