A arqueologia histórica no município de Penafiel

Abstract

We will show that archaeology needs to pay a greater attention to the contexts of modern and contemporary times, which have been more affected by the recent and deep transformations of the territory, also because they have constantly been ignored by the official instruments of identification, inventory and defence of the cultural patrimony. We will try to demonstrate that even today we give more importance and we have gathered more information about the material culture of those who inhabited the lands of Sousa in the Roman times, that became State property, than information related to the habitat and ways of living of the ones that occupied it, for example in the XVIII century. We will also give emphasis, with examples from Penafiel, that this forgetfulness not only brings enormous and some times irreparable losses to the construction of historical knowledge and to the preservation of the patrimonial legacy, but also high material costs when one tries a tardy reverse to the process.