A Round Iron Age: The Circular House in the Hillforts of the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

This article provides a diachronic synthesis of domestic space in the northwestern Iberian Peninsula from recent prehistory through the High Middles Ages. Within the theoretical and methodological frameworks of landscape archaeology and the archaeology of architecture we propose an updated social reading of the archaeological record based on new data collected in the course of recent archaeological investigations at different sites in Galicia. We propose several hypotheses from this perspective concerning different issues linked to northwestern domestic architecture, including the origins of the round house in recent prehistory, the development of an Iron Age architectural style, the symbolic background of these houses, and the impact of Romanization on what eventually becomes the architecture of the High Middle Ages in this part of the Iberian Peninsula.