The Talaiotic culture of the Balearic Islands

Abstract

This article aims to outline the essential features of the human communities which developed on the islands of Mallorca and Menorca between the mid-10th and mid-6th centuries BC. The name Talaiotic culture identifies communities which inhabited small villages dedicated to crop and livestock farming in an autarchic regime whose social development was in the process of hierarchisation. Despite the dissolution of this economic and social structure, contact with the outside world was marked by the strong commercial and political impact of the Punic and Greek colonies, according to the archaeological record.

Keywords

• social complexity
• humanisation of the territory
• territorialisation
• cyclopean architecture
• collective burials