ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief analysis of the discipline’s historiography and of the main subjects studied, and considers the main challenges currently posed by the development of the subject. Despite the fact that the antecedents of medieval archaeology in Spain can be traced in various ways since the 19th century, it is only from the 1980s that medieval archaeology developed in modern terms. In Spain, as in other parts of Europe, the archaeological study of Germanic peoples underwent an early development via culture-historical approaches. The greater numbers of teachers are based in Andalusia and the Mediterranean, with a few working in the Meseta region and in the north of Spain. Medieval archaeology in Spain, as in many other parts of Europe, is frequently practised without explicit theoretical and conceptual approaches, with the result that it does not generate new models or paradigms, but continues to follow those formulated by historians or other related traditions.
