The necropolis of the Casa Romana do Castro de São Domingos (Lousada, Portugal): a funerary space from the Early Middle Ages

Abstract

Between 2017 and 2021 seventeen graves were identified within the research project ‘Excavation, study, and musealisation of the Casa Romana do Castro de São Domingos’ (Lousada, Portugal). Human bones are not preserved, most likely due to the notorious acidity of northern Portugal’s granitic soils, although the length of at least two of the tombs indicates that they would have belonged to non-adult individuals. The single asset recovered from these graves was a bronze buckle hoop, possibly as a result of the violation of most of the tombs within a context of a community with scarce economic resources. The funerary architecture of the necropolis displayed three different types of graves, featuring what would have been an older central area which went on to be gradually expanded, thus giving way to the majority of more recent graves. The proximity of roads is sometimes the main condition underlying the choice of the location of a necropolis and does not necessarily indicate the presence of a religious temple, so finding one in future excavations is unlikely. By analysing existing data regarding other similar structures, it is possible to propose a chronology which established that this necropolis would have been in use between the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.