page_title: Citânia de Briteiros
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Citânia de Briteiros / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Houses in Citânia de Briteiros Português: Casas na Citânia de Briteiros
context_page_description: The Citânia de Briteiros is an archaeological site of the Castro culture located in the Portuguese civil parish of Briteiros São Salvador e Briteiros Santa Leocádia in the municipality of Guimarães; important for its size, "urban" form and developed architecture, it is one of the more excavated sites in northwestern Iberian Peninsula. Although primarily known as the remains of an Iron Age proto-urban hill fort, the excavations at the site have revealed evidence of sequential settlement, extending from the Bronze to Middle Ages.
context_section_description: The site was probably constructed between the first and second century BCE. Notes by Martins Sarmento and from recent explorations show that the Monte de São Romão was a favoured location for rock art engravings of the Atlantic Bronze Age, in the beginning of the first millennium BCE; it is not known when or why this first group left. Numerous early engraved rock surfaces were destroyed when many boulders were cut to build the ramparts and family compounds as the Castro settlement grew. Little is known of the beginnings of the Castro occupation, as no structures from the late Bronze Age have been found. Pottery from the early Iron Age has been found, when the settlement would already have been fortified. The majority of the ruins visible today have been dated from the second Iron Age, especially the last two centuries BCE.
  The Castro inhabitants are believed to have been Celtic . Approximately half the pre-Latin toponyms of Gallaecia were Celtic, while the rest were either non Celtic western Indo-European, or mixed toponyms containing Celtic and non-Celtic elements.
  Sometime in the first century AD the settlement was occupied by Roman settlers. Expansion of the Roman Empire into the region has left evidence in the oppidum at Briteiros, in the form of coins (those of Augustus and Tiberius are the most numerous found, with smaller numbers of coins of the Republic, and the Flavians and the Antonines) ranging from the 1st century BCE to the 2nd century CE. A small number of amphorae and red pottery pieces have been found, and there is some evidence of Romanization in the architecture of the alleys and buildings of the eastern slope, but overall the visible impact of Roman occupiers is not strong. The reduced number of later coin and pottery finds suggests that occupation of the oppidum was declining from the 1st century CE, resulting in the 2nd century with very few people living within the ramparts. Evidence shows that there was a transitory reoccupation in the High Middle Ages, which included the building of a medieval chapel and graveyard on the acropolis.
  The site has been studied extensively since 1874, with the first excavations beginning in 1875, when the Portuguese archaeologist Francisco Martins Sarmento began annual excavation campaigns while helping to develop methods of archaeological research and preservation in Portugal. Sarmento's campaigns led to the discovery of much of the ruins of the acropolis (the highest portion of the settlement), and he reconstructed a pair of dwellings on the site from his research. Continuing discoveries during the first decades of work led Martins Sarmento to purchase the land on which the settlement lay, which was regularly continued by the Sociedade Martins Sarmento. The land and Martins Sarmento's research materials were bequeathed to the Society. From the 1930s through the 1960s, new excavations were carried out by the Society, supervised by Mário Cardozo, which led to the discovery of large parts of the settlement on the eastern slope and additional portions of the acropolis. Further surveys were made in the 1970s (in the north-eastern section), and in 2002, 2005 and 2006.
  The site was classified and protected by IPPAR as a Portuguese National Monument in 1910.
  As research methods developed over the 19th and 20th centuries, the successive excavations at the Briteiros site adapted to evolving concepts, and gaps remain in the scientific knowledge of the site. In 2004 a project was initiated under the responsibility of Minho University with the collaboration of the Martins Sarmento Society to integrate the past studies and improve the conservation of the site.
  Beginning in 1956, the excavations took on a new character, as archaeological objects began being collected from the site, a process that continued in digs in 1958 to 1961, 1964 and 1968. In 1962, the archaeological work was carried out by the Serviços de Conservação (Conservation Services). 
  In 1974 and 1977, there were works to conserve and clean the area, including various larger projects. Between 1977 and 1978, archaeol
caption: The contextual view of the "residences" within the structure
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