Transition from the Pre-Roman World to the Roman World in the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula: the example of Bracara Augusta

Abstract

The foundation ex novo of Bracara Augusta, in the heart of the Bracari's region, is connected to a strategy of economic, political, and administrative control of the emperor Augustus of a vast area that stretched out from Douro up to the estuary of Vigo, and from the Atlantic up to the Gerês mountains. The foundation was not an independent and lonely deed. We cannot speak of her correctly without inserting her in a wide and comprehensive historical context. This historical context is precisely Augustus' policy in Hispania and the development of the campaigns that the Emperor and his generals carried out against the peoples of the North of the Peninsula in the last years of the first century B.C.E. The foundation of the city, between the years 16/15 B.C.E., at the time of Augustus' presence in the Hispania, can be corroborated by the group of exhumed materials, which are the result of a large number of excavations undertaken in several places of the city. The older levels and the turned over contexts of those excavations provided varied materials that unquestionably prove that date. In this study, we will present the ceramic remains dated from the late first century B.C.E. to the mid-first century C.E. Some of this ware have some affinities with ceramic found in fortified settlements ("Castros"), revealing a continuity in the indigenous pottery designed to supply the new nuclei that the Roman world brought about.