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Bronze Age pottery reveals El Argar’s economic and political frontiers A trailblazing study conducted by researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology mapped out the economic and political borders of the territory of El Argar, the Bronze Age site credited with being the first state-level society in the Iberian Peninsula. The research provides insight into how El Argar exerted dominance over neighboring communities that were less centralized in their social structure, including those of La Mancha and Valencia, 4,000 years ago. The study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, analyzes ceramic production and circulation in the borderland between present-day Murcia, allowing researchers to reconstruct the interaction dynamics of these groups between 2200 and 1550 BCE.