The role of flint arrowheads in Bell Beaker groups of the Central Iberian Peninsula

In book: Doce E.G., van Lettow-Vorbeck C.L. (Eds.) Analysis of the Economic Foundations Supporting the Social Supremacy of the Beaker Groups. Proceedings of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1–7 September, Burgos, Spain). Volume 6 / Session B36 — Oxford: Archaeopress, 2016. — pp. 111-127.From the early years of this century, after the rise of processualists analysis and explanations, publications and conferences about Bell Beaker clearly perceived the abandonment of the idea of ‘Bell Beaker culture’ as a phenomenon. Scholars start speaking rather of Bell Beaker ideas with different backgrounds and cultural traditions. It is from then they begin to wonder about the reasons that lead each area to adopt certain elements of the Bell Beaker set and others not.
In this sense we believe that only in recent years the form of understand the archaeological Bell Beaker record is starting to change, giving rise to new interpretations that enrich research after years of analyzing contexts and materials conditioned or subject to exchange prestige objects ideas looking for an originating focus and a global European explanation.
In this article, we try to follow the lead of these new ways of analyzing, with a first approach to the role that flint arrowheads could play in Madrid region, taking into account not only its absence on the Bell Beaker set, but the technological lithic development of chalcolithic societies in this area, and the different household and funerary contexts they have been recovered. The goal is to propose possible answers to the question: why some things in the Bell Beaker set are adopted and others not? And a first step arises in the study area from the observation of the absence of flint arrowheads, however present in many other areas near and far. Why do not appear flint arrowheads in the Bell Beaker set of the region of Madrid?
The presence of flint arrowheads has not been much debated or for Bell Beaker researchers. The most important studies on the subject have been focused on the variability of these objects in relation to European Bell Beaker variants.
We aim to show the interpretative and analytical possibilities that can be derived by the flint arrowheads of Bell Beaker contexts in Madrid region, taking into account a wide range of new data that we know from the archaeological record for the regional Late Prehistory.