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The iron age
Fortified villages (Castros)
Los Castros are
fortified Iron Age settlements. Although we may intuit that their roots lie
towards the end of the Bronze Age, there is at present no archaeological
evidence to support this, and the the oldest examples date from the fifth
century before Christ. Defensive considerations condition their location, and
they are always to be found in places difficult to reach: upon capes or cliffy
promontories along the coast, on mountains or isolated inland elevations atop
steep slopes or spurs commanding panoramic views of the surrounding
countryside. These natural defensive positions are complimented by enormous
earthworks centred around the most accessible parts of the settlement: walls,
ditches, parapets... the walls are generally of rough masonry or rubblework on
their outer face, filled up on the inside with earth and stones, varying in
width from two or three metres to six and a half metres in the case of Campa
Torres (Xixón). Points of access were usually reinforced by double walls
or more complex defenses such as turrets hard by the entrance. In the case of
the Castiellu de Podes (Gozón), for example, access to the main space of
the settlement is only possible by circurnambulating an imposing central
fortified turret.
Amongst these defenses the so-called murallas de módulos are especially
worthy of attention, appearing in different Asturian fortified settlements:
Castiellu de Moriyón (Villaviciosa), La Campa Torres (Xixón),
Castielln de Vagii (Uviéu), Castro de San Chuis (Allande), etc. This
technique consisted in the division of the wall into various independent
sections with a rectangular base and rounded corners which were juxtaposed so
that in the case of an attack the loss or destruction of one part would not
affect the whole line of defence. The wall was usually the last line of
defence, normally preceeded by more or less complex sysgtems of defensive
ditches and counterditches, banks topped with wooden defences, etc. In some of
the fortified settlements in the western part of Asturies (El picu da Mina and
San Isidro) there are signs that stones were sunk into the ground for this
purpose.
More recent archaeological excavations have revealed a more elementary type of
dwellings which share the same groundplan and have walls made of interlaced
poles plastered with clay and ponted with stones, fixed to a perimetric base of
clay and stones. With thatched roofing atop upright supports, constructions of
this type have been located at: Camoca and Moriyón (Villaviciosa), La
Campa Torres (Xixón), Castiellu de Llagú (Uviéu) and
Castiellu San Martin (Sotu'l Barcu). This type of dwelling is the most
characteristic of Celtic Iron Age habitats in the Atlantic area, being widely
documented in Ireland and in the culture of the hill-forts of the British
Isles.
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