These days our colleagues Rebeca Blanco-Rotea, Jose Costa, João Fonte and Manuel Gago received good news. Their paper “A Modern Age redoubt in a possible Roman camp. The relationship between two defensive models in Campos (Vila Nova de Cerveira, Minho Valley, Portugal)” was released as part of the latest volume of Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (JAS-REP).
• Se trata de los recintos de El Xuegu la Bola (Arvechales, Somiedo) y Cueiru (Taxa, Teverga), ubicados a 1700 y a 1440 metros de altitud, siendo los yacimientos militares romanos a más altitud de la Mesa.
• En el proyecto intervienen arqueólogos de diferentes instituciones científicas españolas y europeas vinculados al grupo romanarmy.eu
• La difusión de los hallazgos se hará en tiempo real a través de las redes sociales, en un experimento de divulgación científica
Comprobar la cronología y la adscrición romana de dos importantes recintos militares de la vía de la Mesa, uno de las principales itinerarios de entrada a Asturias desde hace miles de años, es el principal objetivo de la campaña de prospección que se inicia este domingo y durará hasta el lunes 10 de octubre. Un equipo científico conformado por arqueólogos del Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio (INCIPIT) del CSIC, de las Universidades de Oviedo y Santiago de Compostela, así como de las universidades de Durham y Exeter (Reino Unido) y Amsterdam (Holanda) se encuentra ya sobre el terreno realizando las tareas de prospección arqueológica. La dirección del proyecto se lleva a cabo por los arqueólogos Andrés Menéndez Blanco, José Manuel Costa y David González.
Divulgación en tiempo real
Una de las principales novedades de la campaña arqueológica es la voluntad de difusión y retransmisión en tiempo real de los trabajos arqueológicos, aproximando de esta manera la metodología y la práctica científica a los ciudadanos. La comunicación se realizará en las redes sociales, en el facebook de Roman Army (www.facebook.com/romanarmynw) y en la web corporativa del grupo: www.romanarmy.eu y facilitará a todos los interesados seguir los avances en cuanto al reconocimiento de los yacimientos y a su interpretación. A través de formatos didácticos, se ensayarán nuevos procedimientos y estrategias de comunicación científica dirigida al público general.
Lino Tavares Dias and António Baptista Lopes stated the existence of a Roman military camp up in the very top of the Serra do Marão (Portugal). A rectangular enclosure and a stone tower would be the archaeological evidence sustaining that interpretation. This sugested Roman camp (the only one catalogued in Northern Portugal) was also identified thanks to an inscription carved over a rock located in the nearby: Castra Oresbi. However, the meagre archaeological evidence implied the to the refusal of this interpretation by some scholars (like C. M. Martins).
5 June 1921. Spain attends with some somnolence to the escalation of violence that will lead to the famous colonial disaster of Annual. As expected, this situation resonates like a more distant echo in rural Galicia, where the only revolution are the sporadic but typical downpours of the last days of spring. However, the peaceful place of “A Cibdade”, located on the north bank of the Limia River, receives a rare visit. This time, not only the inhabitants of the close villages of Portoquintela and Baños de Bande come to dig the land, but also four particularly well-dressed figures are approaching. They are Ramón Otero Pedrayo, Florentino López Cuevillas and Vicente Risco, prominent Galicianist intellectuals from the capital city of Ourese. The fouth well-known person is Farruco Pena, a local lawyer.
Campos is situated on the outskirts of São Pedro da Torre (Valença, Portugal), on the banks of the Minho River. Here, the Galicians built a star-shaped fortification, the fort of San Luís Gonzaga, during the Portuguese Restoration War (1640-1668). In order to cut the advance of these troops on Portuguese lands the Portuguese elaborated a strategy. As the chronicles narrate, they built a series of watchtowers and fortresses, equidistant from the fort’s by a cannon shot.
Alongside the paper of our colleague José M. Costa, the latest issue of the magazine Arkeogazte contains a work signed by some members of our team. There we present a preliminary study of a Roman camp or castra aestiua recently identified in the place known as A Serra da Casiña (Valboa, Leon).
The camp of Moyapán (Ayande, Asturias) was discovered by chance in 2007, as we analysed the aerial photographs covering one of the most important Roman mining areas of western Asturias. It was the second Roman enclosure recognized in Asturias after El Picu Curriel.los (L.lena/Ayer) and it led our way on the investigation of the presence of the Roman army in Asturias and León.
This is the paper we presented at the 23th Limes Congress, held in Ingolstadt (Germany) in September 2015. There we showed the results of a research about the Roman military presence in north-western Iberia developed by us in the recent past years as well as overall review on the subject showing how the discipline has changed due to the employment of remote sensing techniques like the aerial and satellite imagery or the aerial LiDAR. This website presents a new perspective about the roman military campaigns during the conquest in augustean times of the northern territories of Cantabria and Asturias and the subsequent reorganization of the north-westernmost region of Iberia.
Even if the audio of the video is English you can change the language of the subtitles by clicking the icon of a little grind placed below near the right corner. Since this is an interactive video you can also download KMZ files with additional graphic information of every single archaeological site we talk about. You need to install Google Earth software in order to visualize these files.
At this website you can also see highlined some of the more interesting conclusions of the public paper, in which 17 new Roman military sites were presented.
In this map you can see our proposal on the presence of the Roman army in the northwest of Hispania in 2015. Along with already investigated previously published sites, we added seventeen new locations exhibiting denser Roman military contingents presence, possible new lines progress in Asturias and the first appearances of possible marching camps in the territory of present Galicia.
Our research shows a special concentration of military camps in the westernmost part of Asturias. They follow the very same settlement patterns previously detected in some other scenarios located at the Cantabrian and central-eastern Asturian regions. Although the bibliography and the ancient sources are very silent about the existence of specific war scenarios in this area, the archaeological evidences clearly show the existence of a route flanking the Asturian mountains and probably linked with the augustan campaigns or the subsequent post-war times.