Researchers have identified the economic and political borders separating El Argar, considered to be the first state-society in the Iberian Peninsula, from its La Mancha and Valencia Bronze Age neighbors some 4,000 years ago. These communities, with less centralized social structures, maintained complex relations with the Argaric culture. The study, based on an innovative analysis of pottery production and circulation, opens the door to identifying similar border dynamics in other European societies contemporary to El Argar, and understand how the first states were formed in prehistory.