Cividade de Terroso

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Cividade de Terroso was an important city of the Castro culture in North-western Iberian Peninsula, located in Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal.

The city, known in the Middle Ages as Civitas Teroso, was built at the top of Cividade Hill, in the parish of Terroso, in Póvoa de Varzim, less than 5 km from the coast, near the eastern edge of the modern city.

Situated in the heart of the Castro region,^[1] the Cividade prospered due to its strong defensive walls and its location near the ocean, which facilitated trade with the maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea. However, this trade eventually attracted Roman attention and the Cividade and the Castro culture perished at the end of the Lusitanian War, in which Rome's victory was secured through the murder of Viriathus, leader of the Lusitanians.^[2]

Beyond the main Castro settlement, three of Cividade de Terroso’s outposts are known: Castro de Laundos (mostly unexplored), Castro de Navais (only the fountain and site remains, due to the fact that it is inhabited to this day), and Castro de Argivai (severely damaged).

Contents 1 History 2 Defensive system 3 Urban structure 3.1 Stages 3.2 Family settings 3.3 Streets 4 Culture 4.1 Feeding 4.2 Handicrafts 4.3 Religion and death rituals 5 Commerce 6 References 7 External links

[edit] History

The settlement of Cividade de Terroso was founded during the Bronze Age, between 800 and 900 BC, as a result of the displacement of the resident people in the fertile plain of Beiriz and Várzea of Póvoa de Varzim. That date is supported by the discovery of egg-shaped cesspits, excavated in 1981 by Armando Coelho, where he collected fragments of four vases of the previous period to the establishment of the settlement of the Cividade.^[3] Thus, it is part of the oldest castros, such as the Santa Luzia or Roriz castros.^[4]

The Castro maintained trade relations with the civilizations of the Mediterranean, mainly during the Carthaginian dominium in South-eastern Iberian Peninsula.^[2]

During the Punic Wars, the Romans had learned of the wealth of the Castro region in gold and tin. Viriathus, who led the Lusitanian troops, hindered northward growth of the Roman territory at the Douro river, but his murder in 138 BC opened the way for the Roman legions.

Decimus Junius Brutus led a campaign in order to annex the Castro region, which lead to the complete destruction of the Cividade,^[5] just after the death of Viriathus. The deeds of the Roman commander had echoed in Rome, where he passed to be known by the title Callaicus - from Gallaecia, name by which the Romans knew the Castro region, in honour of the people that settled in the area of Calle - the Callaeci, later the Roman Portus Calle, today's Porto.^[6]

Some time later, Cividade was rebuilt and became heavily Romanized, starting the castro’s last urban era.

The region was incorporated in the Roman Empire and totally pacified during the rule of Caesar Augustus. In the coastal plain, a Roman villa was created, property of a Roman family known as the Euracini. The family was joined by Castro people that started to return to the life in the plain, and Villa Euracini was built. The fishery activity developed with the cetariæ, a Roman method of preserving fish in brine. Thus, from the 1st century onwards, and during the imperial period, the gradual abandonment of Mount Cividade started.^[5]

In Memória Paroquiais (Parish Memories) of 1758, the director António Fernandes da Loba with other clergymen from the parish of Terroso, wrote: This parish is all surrounded by farming fields, and by just one part, almost in the middle of it, there is a more elevated mount, that is about a third of the farming fields of the given parish and the Ancient say that this was the Mount City of Moors, because it is known as Mount Cividade.^[3]

The Lieutenant Veiga Leal in the News of Póvoa de Varzim in May 24 of 1758 writes: "The Mount known as Cividade, where one can see several hints of houses, that people say they formed a city, to this town came cars with bricks from the ruins of that one."^[3]

Cividade was later rarely cited by other authors. Nevertheless, in the early 20th century, Rocha Peixoto encouraged his friend António dos Santos Graça in order to subsidize works of archaeology in the Cividade.^[3]

Excavations began in June 5 of the year 1906 with 25 manual workers and continued until October of the same year, interrupted due to bad weather;^[3] they recommenced in May 1907, finishing that same year. The materials discovered were taken to museums in the city of Porto.^[3]

After the death of Rocha Peixoto, in 1909, some rocks of the Cividade had been used to pave some streets of the Póvoa de Varzim, explicitly Rua Santos Minho Street and Rua das Hortas.^[3] Occasionally, groups of scouts of the Portuguese Youth and others in the decades of 1950 and 1960, made diggings in search for archaeology pieces. This was seen as archaeological vandalism, but continued even after the Cividade was listed as a property of Public Interest in 1961.^[3]

In 1980, the City council of the Póvoa de Varzim invited Armando Coelho to pursue further archaeological works; these took place during the summer of that year.^[3] Later, the city acquired the acropolis area and constructed the archaeological museum of the Cividade de Terroso in its entrance.

In 2005, groups of Portuguese and Spanish (Galician) archaeologists had started to study the hypothesis of this cividade and six others to be classified as World Heritage sites of UNESCO.^[7][8] The visit of UNESCO's inspectors is foreseen for 2007.

[edit] Defensive system

The most typical characteristic of the castros is its defensive system.^[4] The inhabitants had chosen to start living in the mount as a way of protection against attacks and lootings by rival tribes. The Cividade was erected at 152 metres height (about 500 feet), allowing an excellent position to monitor the entire region. One of the sides, the north, was blocked by São Félix Hill, where a smaller castro rose, the Castro de Laundos, that served as a surveillance post.

The movements of Turduli and Celtici proceeding from the South of the Iberian Peninsula in direction to the North are referred by Strabo and have motivated the improvement of the defensive systems of the castros around 500 BC.

Cividade de Terroso is one of the most heavily defended castros, given that the acropolis was surrounded by three rings of walls. These walls were built at different stages, due to the growth of the town.

The walls were composed of great blocks without mortar and were adapted to the topography of the mount. The areas of easier access (South, East and West) possessed high, wide and resistant walls; while the ones in land with steep slopes were protected mainly by strengthening the local features.

That can easily be visible with the discovered structures in the East that present a strong defensive system that reaches 5.30 metres (17 feet 5 inches) wide. While in the Northeast, the wall was constructed using natural granite that only was crowned by a wall of rocks.

The entrance that interrupted the wall was paved with flagstone with about 1.70 metres (5 feet 7 inches) of width. The defensive perimeter seems to have been complemented with a ditch of about 1 metre (3 feet 3 inches) of depth and width in base of the mount, as it was detected while a house was being built in the north of the mount.

[edit] Urban structure

Within the interior of the three rings of walls, in the acropolis, ruins of great diversity subsist, especially the funerary enclosures, which are extremely rare in the Castro world.

In the archaeological works carried through the beginning of 20th century, the Cividade seemed to have a disorganized structure, but more recent data suggests instead an organization whose characteristics stem from older levels of occupation, which had been ignored during the first archaeological works.

Each one of the quadrants of the Cividade is divided in nuclei around a family square almost always paved with flagstone. Some houses possessed a forecourt.

At its peak, the Cividade would enclose nearly 12 hectares (30 acres) and was inhabited by several hundred people.

[edit] Stages

The Cividade passed for some urbanization stages: during the first centuries, the small habitations were constructed with vegetal elements mixed with adobe.

The first constructions in rock started to take form in the 5th century B.C.^[3], supplies that became to be used due to technological progress with the production of iron peaks, a technology that was only available in Asia Minor, but that was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by Phoenician settlers in the Atlantic Coast during the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.^[4]

The constructions of this time are, characteristically, circular with diameters between 4 and 5 meters and with walls 30 to 40 cm thick. The granite rocks were fractured or splintered, later to be located in two lines, with the smoothest part for the exterior and interior of the house. The space between the two rocks was filled with small rocks and mortar of gross sand giving a robust structure to the walls.

In the last stage of the Cividade, the Roman stage (starting in 138–136 B.C.), following the destruction by Decimus Junius Brutus, there is an urban reorganization with use of the new constructive techniques and alteration of forms and dimensions; mostly with the appearance of quadrangular structures, in substitution of circular typically of the Castro culture. The coverings start to use “tegula” instead of vegetal material with adobe.^[3]

During this stage, the used rocks for the construction of the habitations were quadrangular; the project of two lines remained, but the interior space was wider and filled with gross sand or adobe and rocks of small or average size, resulting in thicker walls with 45–60 cm.^[3]

[edit] Family settings

The family settings, composed by four or five circular divisions,^[4] encircle a paved yard with flagstone to where the doors of the different divisions converged. These central yards had important role in family life and were where the daily family activities would take place. These nuclei would be closed by key, disclosing the concern for privacy by families.^[3]

The interior of the constructions of the second stage, previous to the Roman, possessed fine floors made of adobe or gross sand. Some of these floors were decorated with the impression of ropes, wave drawings and impression of circles, especially in fireplaces. In the Roman-influence stage, these floors had become well-taken care of, being denser and thicker.

[edit] Streets

The family settings were divided by narrow roads with some public spaces. The two main streets had the typical Roman orientation of the Decumanus and Cardium. The Decumanus was a street that slightly followed the wall to the East for the West and slightly curved for Southwest from the crossroad with the Cardium (North-South street), finishing in the entrance of the Cividade. The exterior access was fulfilled by a delicate descending until the way that is still used today to enter in the Cividade.^[3]

These main roads divided the settlement in four parts. Each one of these parts was composed of four to five family settings.^[3]

In some points of the city, vestiges of sewers or narrow channels had been discovered; these would serve to direct rain water.^[3]

[edit] Culture

The population was devoted to agriculture of cereals and vegetables, fishery, recollection, shepherding and worked metals, textiles and ceramics. From the interior of the Iberian Peninsula cultural influences had arrived, beyond the ones proceeding from the Mediterranean through commerce.^[9]

The Castro culture is known by having defensive walls in their cities and villages, with circular houses in mount tops and for its characteristic ceramics, widely popular among them, and it dies with the Roman acculturation and the movement of the populations for the coastal plain, where the strong Roman cultural presence, from the 2nd century BC onwards, is visible in the vestiges of Roman villas found there where, currently, the city of the Póvoa de Varzim is located (Old Town of Póvoa de Varzim, Alto de Martim Vaz and Junqueira), andin the parishes of Estela (Vila Mendo) and near the Chapel of Santo André in Aver-o-Mar.

[edit] Feeding

The population lived mainly from agriculture, mainly with the culture of cereals such as wheat and barley, and of vegetables (the broadbean) and acorn.

The concheiro found in the Cividade showed that they ate limpets, mussels and Sea urches in raw or cooked form.^[4] These species are still broadly common. Fishing must not have been a regular activity, given the lack of archaeological evidence, but the discovery of hooks and net weights demonstrates that the Castro people were able to catch fish of considerable size such as grouper and snook.^[9]

Barley was cultivated to produce a kind of beer, which was nicknamed zythos. Beer was considered a barbaric drink by the Greeks and Romans given the fact that they were accustomed to the subtleness of wine. Acorn was triturated to create a kind of flour.^[9]

Collection of wild plants, fruits, seeds and roots was used to complement dietary staples; eating and collecting wild blackberries, dandelion, clovers and even kelps. Some of these vegetables are still used by the local population today. The Romans introduced the consumption of wine and olive oil.^[9]

The animals used by the Castro people are confirmed by classic documents and archaeological registers, and included horses, pigs, cows and sheep. It is interesting to note that there was a cultural taboo against the eating of horses or dogs.^[9]

There is little evidence of poultry raising during the Castro period, but during the period of Roman influence it became quite common.^[9]

Although there is only fragmentary evidence in the Cividade, hunting must have been a part of everyday life given that classic sources, such as Strabo and Pliny describe the region as very rich in fauna, including: wild bear, deer, wild boars, foxes, beavers, rabbits, hares and a variety of birds; all of which would have been valuable food sources.^[9]

[edit] Handicrafts

Castro ceramics (goblets and vases) evolved during the ages, from a primitive system to the use of potter wheels. However, the amphorae and the use of the glass only started to be common with the Romanization. These amphorae, essentially, served for the transport and storage of cereals, fruits, wine and olive oil.^[9]

Ceramics found in the Cividade de Terroso had, many of them, local identity.^[9] Pottery was seen as a masculine work and had been found in great number and great variety, showing that it was a cheap, important and accessible produtct.

However, Cividade's ceramic structure are practically identical to the ones found in other castros of the same period. The decoration of the vases was of the incisive type, even so scapulae and impressed vases also existed; adobe lace, in rope form, with or without incisions are also found.^[9]

Drawings in "S", assigned as palmípedes, are frequently found in engraved vases, these could be printed with other printed or engraved drawings. Other decorative forms, that can appear mixed and with diverse techniques, include circles, triangles, semicircles, lines, in zig-zag, in a total of about two hundred of different kinds of drawings.^[9]

Weaving was sufficiently generalized and was seen as a feminine obligation and was also progressing, in special during the Roman period, having been found some weights of sewing press and sets of ten of cossoiros. The discovery of shears came to strengthen the idea of the systematic breeding of sheep to use their wool.^[9]

Numerous vestiges of metallurgic activities had been detected and great discovered amounts of casting slags, fibulae, fragmented of objects in iron and residues of other metals, mostly lead, copper/bronze, tin and perhaps gold. Gatos (for repairing ceramics), pins, fíbulae, stili and needles in copper or bronze, disclosing that the work in bronze and its leagues was one of the most common activities of the Cividade. The iron was used for many daily objects, being found some nails, but also hooks and a tip of a scythe or dagger.^[9]

Near the door of the wall (in the southwest of the city) a workshop was identified, given that in the place some vestiges of this activity had been found such as the use of fire with high temperatures, nugget and slags of casting of some metals, ores and other indications.^[9]

Goldsmithery contributed for Póvoa de Varzim being one of the places of reference for proto-historical archaeology in North-western Iberian Peninsula. Namely, with the finding of some complete jewels: the Earrings of Laundos and the articulated necklace and earrings of Estela. In the proper Cividade, some certifications of works in gold and silver had been collected by Rocha Peixoto. In all the mountain range of Rates, the ancient mining explorations are visible: Castro and Roman ones, given that these mounts possessed essential gold and silver for jewel production.

In 1904, a mason while constructing a mill in the top of the Mount of São Félix, close to the smaller Castro de Laundos, finds a vase with jewels inside, these jewels had been bought by Rocha Peixoto that took them for the Museum of Porto. The jewels had disclosed the use of an evolved technique, very similar to ones made in the Mediterranean, namely with the use of plates and welds, filigree and granulated.

[edit] Religion and death rituals

The Castro people had a great number of deities. Religious cults and ceremonies had the objective to harmonize the people with natural forces.

Some cesspits, for instance organized as a pentagon, adorn the flagstone of the Cividade, their function is unknown, but they may have had some magical-religious function.^[10]

The funerary ritual of the Cividade was probably common to other pre-Roman peoples of the Portuguese territory, but archaeological data are very rarely found in the Castro area, excepting for Cividade de Terroso. ^[10]

The ritual of the Cividade consisted of the rite of the incineration, depositing the ashes of their dead in small circular-shaped cesspits with stonework adornment in the interior of the houses. Later, the ashes had passed to be deposited in the exterior of the houses, but inside of the family setting.^[10]

In 1980, the discovery of a funerary cist, and an entire vase, and fragments of another one without covering, evidences breaking. This vase was very similar to another found in Mount São Félix, this last one with jewels in its interior, assuming that these jewels had the same funerary context.^[10]

[edit] Commerce

The visits of Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans had as objective the exchange of fabrics and wine for gold and tin, despite the scarcity of terrestrial ways, this was not a problem for Cividade de Terroso that was strategically located close to the sea and the Ave River, thus an extensive commerce existed by Atlantic and fluvial ways. However, a terrestrial one was known, the Silver Way (name on the Roman Era) that started in the south of the peninsula reaching the northeast by inland.^[11]

The external commerce, dominated by tin, was complemented with domestic commerce in tribal markets between the different cities and villages of the Castro culture, they exchanged textiles, metals (gold, copper, tin and lead) and other objects including exotic products, such as glass or exotic ceramics, proceeding from contacts with the peoples of the Mediterranean or other areas of the Peninsula.

With the annexation of the Castro region by the Roman Republic, the commerce starts to be one of the main ways for regional economic development, with the Roman merchants organized in associations known as collegia. These associations functioned as true commercial companies who looked for monopoly in commercial relations.^[11]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Subtus Montis Terroso - exhibition in the Municipal Museum of Póvoa de Varzim (July 2006 - May 2007)
• João Aguiar - Uma Deusa na Bruma, Edições Asa - Historical novel about the Cividade de Terroso (Póvoa de Varzim)