PAST AND PRESENT OF THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ALQUERIAS

Thirty years after its first theoretical reflections, the archaeology of al-Andalus has yet to find a true identity in the context of Islamic Archaeology. It is a discipline focused on urban studies and fascinated by great monuments and higher material representations of the society, but which has still not developed a predominantly rural archaeology. In the same way as in recent years, there have been calls for a reorientation of the archaeology of the productive spaces to agrarian archaeology, this paper analyses the possibilities of a new archaeology of rural settlements or alquerias for the knowledge of Andalusian society(1).