Castros and Cordage: Recognizing Contextual Evidence of Iron Age Practice at São Martinho

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Ties That Bind: Cordage, Its Sources, and the Artifacts of Its Creation and Use" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Castro settlements, prominent from the Late Chalcolithic through the Iron Age in western Iberia, are often described as hillforts or defensive hilltop villages. The delineation of sites as castros often influences archaeological interpretations, bolstering focus on the strategic advantages of the geographic settings for population and herd protection, resource and network access, landscape control, or projections of political power. Excavations at Castro de São Martinho in central Portugal have revealed that spinning and cordage production were important components of the everyday secondary products economy, findings that challenge the potential reductionism of location-driven narratives. While direct recovery of fiber artifacts is extremely rare due to basalt-derived sediments, spindle whorls were found in most excavation blocks at São Martinho. This presentation explores the context of a spindle whorl set associated with a large firepit feature that included abundant macrobotanical remains of inedible, poor-burning flowering and shrub plants. Local ethnographic investigation and experimental replication indicate that some of these plant tissues are suitable for manufacturing adjective dyes. The São Martinho case illustrates the benefits of considering past cordage and textile practices during hypothesis formulation and the need for developing understandings of archaeological features resulting from fiber processing and dyeworks.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Ties That Bind: Cordage, Its Sources, and the Artifacts of Its Creation and Use   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38679.0