The Archaeology of Roman Portugal aims to contribute to the wider debate on Roman imperialism and expansionism, by bringing to the fore a much-underrepresented area of the Roman empire, at least in English-language scholarship: its westernmost edge in modern day Portugal. Highlighting the perspective from Roman Portugal will contribute to our understanding of the Roman empire, because it presents both an extraordinary landscape in the sense of economic opportunities (ocean resources, marble and metal mining) and settlement history. The volume aims to present new data and insights from both archaeology and ancient history, and to discuss their significance for our understanding of Roman expansion and imperialism. A key goal of the volume is to discuss how the Portuguese panorama compares to other areas of the Iberian peninsula.
An explicit goal of the volume is to better integrate Portuguese scholarship in the academic debate on the Mediterranean Roman world, and to contextualize it firmly in the wider Iberian and Western Mediterranean context. Therefore, chapters are produced by internationally diverse scholars in archaeology and ancient history from Portugal, Spain, Germany, the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. With a view to asses the potential of integrating best practices in archaeological approaches and methodology, different national and disciplinary research traditions and historical frameworks will be explicitly discussed.

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• I. Contested landscapes: between pre-Roman polities and early Roman encroachment
  • 1. Exploring Rome’s early military deployment strategies in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula
  • 2. Late Iron Age and early Roman conflict and interaction in southern Callaecia (north-west Iberia)
  • 3. Towers, territory, and the negotiation of a colonial landscape in the early Roman Central Alentejo
  • 4. The last frontier: Late Iron Age society, Roman conquest, and the Romanisation of the territory north of the River Duero
• II. Economic targets: integrating and energising resources
  • 5. Upgrading town appearances: relating white marble exploitation and town development in Roman Lusitania
  • 6. Shifting landscapes: change and adaptation in the Lusitanian territory during the first globalisation
  • 7. Adding complexity to a complex world: the role of tableware imports in Portugal during the 2nd and 1st centuries BC
• III. Cities and hillforts: settlement organisation in the Roman west
  • 8. Land-use and settlement patterns around Ercavica in Antiquity: initial findings
  • 9. Understanding the town-territory relationship: a case study from Lusitania
  • 10. Why would we need a city? The dispersed civitates in Lusitania
  • 11. Roman rural life in the far west: the case study of the Serena Region (Badajoz, Spain)
• IV. Local religious and cultural identity
  • 12. The role of cult places in shaping landscapes during the Roman expansion: an Iberian perspective on a Mediterranean process
  • 13. Men, women, children, animals: the votive statuary from the sanctuary of Endovellicus at São Miguel da Mota/Alandroal (Portugal)
  • 14. Romanising the mountains? Exploring cultural change through archaeological spatial analysis in western Sierra Morena (Spain)
  • 15. Oppida and public spaces: constructing identities in Late Iron Age and early Roman north-west Iberia
  • 16. Funerary practices and material culture: a ‘portrait from life’ in the fields of Lusitania