Susana González Reyero

My research is focused on the study of the Iron Age Iberian societies in the Mediterranean façade of the Iberian Peninsula. My main research interest is the study of social relations among Iberians through archaeology, paying close attention to the way power was constructed and contested from the 8th to the 1st centuries BC.

My current study area lies in the south-eastern hinterland of the Iberian Peninsula: the upper Segura valley. It is an area with significant relief, a cross-roads connecting that coast, the Upper Andalucía and the Southern Meseta. The object of study is understanding this territory and how it can offer information regarding the variability of social hierarchy formation in the Iron Age of the Western Mediterranean. I understand these images as dynamic elements in social practice, as the materialization of several forms of coercion and cohesion aimed at maintaining certain forms of social and territorial organisation.

I understand that this research requires the integration of several types of analysis, from the spatial dimension of the Iberian socio-political system, to the productive uses of the landscape, and the materialization of ideology. I am particularly interested on the study of images produced by the Iberians as an active factor in the construction of memory within the community and as dynamic elements in different forms of social inequality throughout the Iron Age. The contact between the Iberians and the populations arrived to their coasts, is the context of an heterogeneous interaction which entails multiple forms of contact —presential or not, ideological, permanent or sporadic, etc.— that interest me particularly since they would alter significantly the structures of dependency among these groups.

Previously, my research has centred on analyzing images (photography and drawings) produced during the development of Archaeology in Spain. I focused on the role photography played in transforming archaeological practice, and as pretended evidence of different political and identity narratives.