The Northwestern Iberian Mountains: Resilient Landscapes until the Augustan Conquest, 29–19 B.C.

Abstract

The Iberian Peninsula is an area of the Western Mediterranean among the most sensitive to climatic and anthropogenic change. It has formed the centre-piece of numerous palaeoenvironmental studies of mountain and valleys, covering different chronologies and historical periods. These studies, however, include no palaeoenvironmental background to the Roman military conquests of the late third to the late first centuries B.C. This paper presents palynological evidence from two Roman military camps, A Recacha and A Granda das Xarras, in the mountains of Northwest Iberia. The main results reflect anthropic activities that shaped the landscape since at least the end of the third millennium B.C., with the presence of montane heaths and deciduous forests. During the first millennium B.C., a modest increase in anthropic activity was detected, possibly due to seasonal grazing. Throughout the Roman conquest, slightly increased signs of anthropogenic activity on the local landscape are detected, leaving a landscape which has changed little throughout the two thousand years that have since passed.