ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

ARCHEOLOGY–HISTORYTYPES OF HABITAT AT THE END OF THE BRONZE AGE AND THEBEGINNING OF THE IRON AGE IN OLTENIASIMONA LAZĂRSince its beginnings, social anthropology gave a special attention to the“inhabited place”. Analyzing the spatial disposal of the dwellings, the publicplaces and the cult zones from the interior of a dwelling, anthropologists likeMalinowski, Paul Radin or C.Lévi-Strauss 1 tried to explain the propinquity, theformation and the exertion of power, or of social hierarchy in the interior oftraditional societies. “Le monde d’occupacion de l’espace a d’ailleurs été reconudepuis longtemps comme l’un des critères essentiels du phénomène politique.Lewis H.Morgan, Max Weber ou Edward E.Evans-Pritchard insistènt surl’importance particulière du territoire. Meme dans une société acéphale commecelle des Tiv du Nigéria, la structure segmentaire de la société, fondée sur leprincipe de descendence, produisait une organisation segmentaire de l’espace 2 . Aplus forte reson dans des sociétés plus complexes et centralisées la hiérarchie desétablissements trouve une traduction inévitable dans l’aménagement de l’espace” 3 .Interesting is the opposition observed, at all the ethnographic analyzedsocieties, between the inhabited space and the surrounding area, perceived like ahostile, impure environment 4 . Referring to this aspect M.Eliade highlighted“Setting into a territory means actually consecrating it. When the settlement isno longer temporary, such as the nomads, but permanent, such as the sedentarypeople, it involves a vital decision, which regards the existence of the wholecommunity. Setting down in a certain place, organizing it, living in it are actionsthat involve a vital decision: choosing a Universe that will be assimilatedthrough creation…this way it becomes the sacred work of the gods… After wehave comprehended the cosmogonical value of the Centre, we will understandbetter why any human settlement repeats The Creation of the World, startingfrom a central point.” 51 C. Levi-Strauss Atropologia structurală, Bucureşti, Politica Publishing House, 1978,p. 158-196.2 L. Bohannam, P. Bohannan, The Tiv of Central Nigeria, London, 1953.3 P. Brun, La genese de l’etat: les apport de l’archeologie, in Les princes de laprotohistoire et l’emergence de l’etat, 1999, p. 31.4 C. Lévi-Strauss, op cit., p. 163-164, 169-170; M. Eliade, Sacrul şi profanul, HumanitasPublishing House, 2000, p. 25.5 M. Eliade, op.cit., p. 29 and the next.ARHIVELE OLTENIEI, Serie nouă, nr. 21, 2007, p. 7–22