The Copper Age (c. 3200–2200 calBC) is a highly debated period of Iberian late prehistory. Research carried out recently has changed previously held views to extents that were hard to imagine two decades ago. One of the most salient contributions is the advancement in the study of ditched enclosures, for which very little information was available up until the 1990’s.

The study of large-size enclosures with ditches occurring in the 4th and 3rdmillennia BC, such as, for example, Valencina de la Concepción (Seville, Spain), Marroquíes Bajos (Jaén, Spain), Perdigões (Alentejo, Portugal) or Camino de las Yeseras (Madrid, Spain) has provided a great deal of new evidence about Copper Age social life that needs to be assembled together with previously existing theories based on ‘fortified settlements’ (or ‘walled enclosures’) such as the ‘classic’ sites of Los Millares or Zambujal. At the same time, the spread of the application of archaeometric techniques has revealed the scope of the circulation of certain raw materials, such as cinnabar, amber, flint, variscite (and other greenstones) as well as, specially, ivory. This evidence poses new challenges to the understanding of the balance that endogenous and exogenous factors had in the unfolding of Copper Age social life. As a general background for these new discoveries is the highly debated issue of social complexity, which encompasses a number of major problems, such as economic intensification, labour mobilisation, monumentality, burial practices, craft specialisation or social inequality. In this talk, I will attempt to provide a synthesis of how recent research is shaping new insights into such problems.