Reassessing Roman military activity through an interdisciplinary approach: Myth and archaeology in Laboreiro Mountain (Northwestern Iberia)

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103993
• Publication Date: 2023-04-06T21:44:51Z
• Authors: João Fonte; Ana Luísa Rodrigues; Maria Isabel Dias; Dulce Russo; Tiago do Pereiro; José Carvalho; Sérgio Amorim; Carlos Jorge; Patrícia Monteiro; Cruz Ferro-Vázquez; Jose Manuel Costa...; Manuel Gago; Ioana Oltean
• Keywords: Luminescence; 900; Absolute dating; Archaeological survey; Roman camps; 930; 15. Life on land; Remote sensing; Roman camp; Radiocarbon

Peer reviewed<br/>The present work aims at the archaeological characterisation and historical contextualisation of two large enclosures recently located through remote sensing in the Laboreiro Mountain on the border between Portugal and Galicia: Lomba do Mouro and Chaira da Maza. Ancient written sources, remote sensing, archaeological survey, and absolute dating will be combined in order to shed new light on these enclosures. Given the specificity of the archaeological structures and contexts under study, the need to use complementary absolute dating methods will be discussed, including luminescence and radiocarbon dating. The results in the case of the Lomba do Mouro enclosure point to it possibly being a Roman military camp of late-Republican chronology.<br/>JF was funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship “Finisterrae: Negotiating and contesting marginal landscapes on the Western fringes of the Roman Empire” funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 794048. C2TN/IST authors gratefully acknowledge the FCT (Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation) support through the UID/Multi/04349/2020 and post-doctoral grant SFRH/BPD/114986/2016 of A. L. Rodrigues. Part of this research was also funded by FEDER through the COMPETE 2020 Programme, Lisboa Regional Programme and European Regional Development Fund (FEEI), and National Funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) under the scope of the Iberian Tin project (PTDC/HAR-ARQ/32290/2017).<br/>