Gadir in the 5th century BC. Restructuring city and territory

Resumen

The splendour of Gadir in the 5th century BC is evident from classical texts and isolated archaeological finds, whichwent hand in hand with new forms of political and administrative organisation that came with newly acquired wealth. Yet,our knowledge of the urban morphology and historic development of the Punic city remains quite limited. For the Archaicperiod, a small part of the settlement has been excavated under the «Teatro Cómico», but much of the city remains unknown.Many other questions remain, including where did the population move to after the earliest settlement was abandoned? Whowas buried in lavish anthropoid sarcophagi? What relationship existed between the people living on the islands and those onthe mainland? What was the role of the salted fish industry? Because traditional scholarship has not been successful in explaining the historical development of Gadir after the initial colonial period sensu stricto or in creating new interpretive models, inthis chapter I propose possible answers to these and other questions on the basis of the currently available evidence