Romans burned Celtic town in Spain during conquest
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Archaeologists in Spain uncovered a Roman military camp used during the Cantabrian Wars in the first century B.C.
The camp, featuring a 39-foot-wide earthen platform and a 5-foot-thick stone wall, sat about one-third of a mile from a settlement inhabited by the Cantabri people, a Celtic group living in the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain. The Romans, under Emperor Augustus, conquered the Cantabri after a decade of resistance, bringing the Iberian Peninsula under Roman control.
Excavations at the camp revealed weapon fragments and hobnails, iron tacks used on Roman soldiers’ sandals, suggesting the army prepared for an attack on the Iron Age community. The archaeologists also found evidence of a major fire that destroyed the pre-Roman settlement, including two temples.
Eduardo González Gómez de Agüero, an archaeologist at the University of León, believes the Romans intentionally started the fire not only to defeat the Cantabri but also to demoralize them by destroying their culture and connection to the land. Researchers continue to investigate the timing of the final attack and whether the settlement burned quickly or over a longer period.
This latest discovery adds to the 66 other Roman camps already found in northern Spain, demonstrating the scale of the Roman campaign.
