The fort wall

In the absence of straight interior streets, which arrived as a result of the new Roman settlements, the Castromao wall, in addition to being a defensive element, also served as the main communication route through its walkway, facilitating the movement of people and goods. Evidence of this can be found by several steps that give access to it from different quarters.

The fortress wall reinforced the good natural defensive conditions of the settlement, and appeared complemented by other elements such as moats, embankments or parapets.

Another dimension of the wall is symbolic. The monumentality of this defensive wall conveyed an idea of prestige to strangers, anticipating the economic resources and power of the community that it was protecting.  The set of structures that you see here, apparently unrelated, were the first to have been excavated at the entire settlement, in 1966. The constructions on the lowest platform form a "community of indigenous typology" bordered by the wall itself, and it appears separated by walls of containment and levelling of other constructions that are raised on the upper levels.

A Portable Furnace

It was recovered during the excavations that took place in 1971. Metal spills were not documented in the area, but foundry casts and flat mills were found, that possibly used to crush the mineral.

The possibility of it being a conventional ceramic kiln is unlikely due to its small size. Therefore it could be an apparatus designed for the smelting of minerals to obtain metals: gold, copper or silver.

The fretted triskeles

Together with the chordate motifs, interlacing and the figures of warriors, the triskeles are elements of the carved stone reliefs typical of the Bracarense convent, that is, from the south western area of the Galician-Roman culture.

The technical complexity of these decorative motifs reveals a great technical skill on the part of the craftsmen who carved them, which leads us to think it was a full-time dedication. In Castromao several triskeles were found, the best known of all, is of an infrequent openwork typology, which turns its three arms from left to right. Its execution makes us think that it was embedded in the wall of a square-plan building, acting as a latticework during the last stage in which this sector of the settlement was inhabited, back in the II century AD.  In addition to its practical function, as a latticework, the triskeles can also be interpreted as an artistic key, since when illuminated by the sun it would create its reflection on an interior wall. These elements can also be linked to the religious world, specifically to solar worship, something that was very frequent throughout prehistoric Europe, which welcomed the different types of swastika (rosettes, triskeles with three and four arms) as a frequent emblem of identity.