"Pass the mountains, follow the megaliths and there you are!" : landscape, resources and society in the west of the province of Toledo (Spain) in the context of Iberian late prehistory

Our knowledge of the Central Iberian prehistoric communities is still worse than that of those in Andalucía or southern Portugal. Recent work on the southern Meseta uncovered site types previously unknown in the central area: On the territory of the modern village of Azután, a large double-ditched enclosure (El Prado) and several other ditched systems were detected on the terraces of the Tagus River. El Prado became the key topic of this study, as it is the only large enclosure of the Mesetas with a chronology contradicting the idea of a diffusion of such sites from the coastal areas. New investigations revealed outstanding results about the Chalcolithic communities of the southern Meseta. The territorial study of the whole province, including the mapping of the known late prehistoric sites, painted a new picture of the late Neolithic/ Chalcolithic of the Tagus middle basin. On-site research at El Prado – taking into account scientific analyses as well – provided new data on chronology and late prehistoric archaeological structures comparable on the southern Meseta only to the results of Primitiva Bueno and her team in Huecas. The unexpected results from El Prado surpassed the initial expectations by far, proving that the sedentary communities of the interior were in close contact and constant exchange with the coastal areas of the peninsula.