Humanizing the western Cantabrian Mountains in northwestern Iberia

This chapter provides an archaeological account of the anthropization processes in the western sector of the Cantabrian Mountains during the five millennia between the emergence of agriculture and animal domestication and the Roman conquest of the area. For too long upland areas such as the Cantabrian Mountains in northwestern Iberia have been regarded as Europe’s last “natural landscapes” and conceptualized as pristine areas where human impact is barely noticeable. The Cantabrian Mountains are located in the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. Despite limited archaeological research in northwestern Iberia, it is broadly assumed that the livelihoods of the Bronze Age groups were not so different to the Neolithic communities regarding settlement patterns and subsistence strategies. Agricultural activities intensified in northwestern Iberia and the Cantabrian Mountains throughout the Iron Age thanks to the diversification of cultivated species, the use of new iron tools along with draught animals and the consolidation of stable crop field systems around the hillforts