Portugal
Pegarinhos – 2023

The Trás do Castelo site at Vale de Mir – Pegarinhos (Portugal) is located in the Douro Valley, on the edge of a granite plateau. Numerous campaigns carried out on the site since 2012 have revealed an agricultural settlement established in the late 1st century AD and abandoned in the second half of the 3rd century. The remains brought to light relate to a rural operation combining different types of activity: livestock rearing, cereal processing, textile work (probably linen) and wine production. The latter remains unique in this region, which straddles two provinces (Tarraconaise and Lusitania), as it is the oldest known evidence of wine production in the Douro Valley.
The remains probably correspond to the economic part of a villa-type settlement.

After a period of abandonment, the site was reoccupied during the 4th century, either by reusing certain areas of the former farm, or by creating new buildings of a rather frustrated nature.
The 2022 campaign documented this second occupation a little better, with the discovery of three small contiguous areas, built on a granite slope, whose particularity is to have yielded an abundance of different types of furniture: ceramics, metal objects, glass, ornaments and above all coins.

One of the particularities of this late occupation is the discovery of five small monetary deposits that can be interpreted as purses. In view of this surprising discovery, it was decided to halt excavation of these areas and implement a specific protocol in 2023.

During the 2023 campaign, the above-mentioned areas were excavated by hand, and the sediments were thoroughly sieved. The furniture found was both in the demolition levels and on the dirt floors. The first area (20) is equipped with fireplaces and a buried dolium, whose biochemical analysis (Garnier laboratory) did not reveal the presence of any particular product: it is most certainly a simple water tank. Further north, the second area (21a), which includes a hearth, yielded the remains of 5 dolia crushed in situ. Biochemical analyses are currently underway to determine their content(s). As for the last space (21b), no evidence of any kind has been found, apart from the presence, as in the other rooms, of items of furniture: fine and common ceramics, amphorae, storage vases, glass vases, iron and copper-alloy tools, items of finery, millstone fragments, weavers’ weights and, above all, the large monetary lot already mentioned.

By 2022, northern space has delivered around 1,350 coins. In 2023, space 21b added around 560 examples to this set. The chronological arc provided by this second set is similar to that of the 2022 lot. It covers almost the entire 4th century, from the reign of Maxentius to that of Arcadius. It includes a high proportion of imitation coins.
As the coinage is still being studied, it is too early to draw definitive conclusions on the presence of coins in two specific areas of the site. We may also be able to associate the five small deposits (discovered in 2015 and 2021) whose presence was, to say the least, enigmatic. We might even consider them as offerings.

A second sequence was also observed, materialized by the discovery of two complete terracotta oil lamps. The first was laid flat on the dolia fragments in space 21a. It is decorated with the deified Sol Invictus. The second was found in space 21b, this time laid upside down on a schist slab. It features a lion facing a snake. This object was placed between two flat granite blocks which, together with other stone elements, form a circular arc in the room.

The presence of this type of furniture in such small spaces (15 m² on average) is perplexing. While these rooms may have been used simply as dumping areas, certain features, such as the presence of money lots with a certain degree of organization, could argue in favor of a place of worship. In particular, we note the similarities with late cult practices observed in the sanctuaries of Gaul: coins are no longer collected and litter the floors as close as possible to the relics. They were either placed on the ground or thrown (Iactatio stipis).
This “cultic” interpretation could be reinforced by the second sequence, which, with its carefully placed oil lamps, betrays a religious practice perhaps of Eastern origin. The presence of two complete oil lamps, each in a separate room, combined with the arched blocks, could indeed attest to a magical gesture to “close off” the area.
Examples of this type of site are rarely documented on the Iberian Peninsula. We have to go to more distant regions such as Germania or northern Gaul to find elements of comparison.