The rural world in the Douro Valley during antiquity: A rereading of the occupation of the countryside in northern Lusitania (first to fourth century)
Type de matériel :
70
The Portuguese part of the Douro Valley contains a series of relatively well-documented ancient sites that allow us to draw up a first assessment of the forms of rural habitat in this region, which straddles two Roman provinces: Hispania Tarraconensis in the north and Lusitania in the south. These discoveries, complemented by a partial revision of the documentation collected, allow us to better understand the diversity of production in this part of the valley. After the Roman conquest under the reign of Augustus, with the Cantabrian Wars (25–24 BC) and the complete pacification of the north-western Iberian Peninsula, the landscape seems to have evolved with the transfer of the population of small indigenous farming communities, living in the “ castros,” the local oppida, to areas where the land was more suitable for livestock and agriculture. The latter was part of a production system that can be described as a predominantly viticultural polyculture. The cultivation of cereals met both local consumption needs and the demand of towns. As for the forms of settlement and their facilities, a notable difference emerges between the settlements near the Douro Valley, oriented more toward the Galician region, and those further south, which were in direct contact with the Lusitanian capital and the Mediterranean.
Réseaux sociaux