PINTIA EVERYDAY AND SYMBOLIC

PINTIA THE TOWN OF LAS QUINTANAS The Vaccean civilization occupied half of the current autonomous community of Castile Leon between the 5th century BC and the Roman occupation of Hispania giving rise to the hallmarks of the central sector of the Douro basin. These Celtic peoples were responsible for the birth of the first towns in our history the introduction of the traditional architecture of adobe and wood or the general use of the extensive cereal farming which formed a landscape similar to today's lands. The Vaccaei were also skilled craftsmen. Their products were the best considered of the time. However, they did not form a state organization. Their territory is the result of the sum of different towns, or 'oppida'. VACCEAN PINTIA. TOWN AND TERRITORY Pintia was one of those Vaccean towns. It was located in a large flatland in the Douro meadow next to the villages of Padilla de Duero and Pesquera, in Valladolid. It formed a well-defined and structured urban nucleus of 125 hectares distanced from the nearest town, Roa de Duero ancient Rauda, by a day walking. The archaeological drilling and excavation works on the site during the last 25 years have identified several functional areas. On the left bank of the Douro the main habitat, Las Quintanas, of 25 hectares was delimited by a moat and ramparts in adobe and wood. In the outskirts, beyond the ramparts, the area of Los Cenizales where the rite of corpse cremation would take place the necropolis of Las Ruedas, of 4 hectares contains Vaccean and Roman remains. Burials were marked with big limestone flagstones brought from the Pajares hills In front of the necropolis of Las Ruedas research shows evidence of a possible shrine. Finally, the opposite bank of the river hosted Carralaceña's crafts quarter with its own necropolis. Together with these urban areas other farming areas, lands, forests, meadows… surrounded the town and the communication roads. The settlement of Las Quintanas for over a thousand years has conditioned the tell landscape of four meters of stratigraphic thickness. The excavations carried out in this enclave have focused on a large trench of 8x56 meters. The levels referring to the Vaccean period are the result of a series of violent fire destructions. Thanks to the numerous remains from this period archaeology provides information on the domestic activities in Pintia. ARCHITECTURE BASED ON MUD AND WOOD During the First Iron Age, within the Soto de Medinilla culture to the wool mantles of the Celtiberians and Vaccaei in the Douro basin the adobe and wood architecture evidenced the intention of settling down in the area. The Vaccaei inherited this building technique and adapted it to the rectangular ground plan which contributed to a more rational town planning and to laying the foundations of the architecture in this area. Even if Vaccean living spaces are not totally known the layout of the archeological remains lets us imagine their building patterns their functional necessities which determined the creation of separate spaces within the houses or the neighborhood building relationships. Wood was used to erect the structures and the internal compartmentalization of the buildings. Adobe and mud walls were used to cover hollows. The external walls were of a rope row, with external and internal plasters. The internal partitions had a base of wood embedded in a tight trench in which sticks were intertwined to make the partitions. The finish touch was a thick mud plaster. These walls were decorated with white, black and red painting. The distribution of the buildings has been reconstructed by the layout of domestic grave goods. Textile, oven, flour storing and processing areas have emerged as well as fireplaces, made on refractory ceramics. Adjoining corridors have been identified between houses. This implies that buildings did not share structural support. THE OBTENTION OF FOOD The Vaccaei developed a mixed economy based on agriculture and stockbreeding and complemented with wild resources. The settlement pattern with large non-inhabited areas favored the exploitation of forest resources. The Vaccaei practised extensive cereal farming as evidenced by classical sources and archaeology. The excavations in Pintia have confirmed the development of this activity. In many Vaccean buildings, devastated by fire charred deposits of wheat have been uncovered in silos embedded in the building's soil. In 2001, an underground warehouse of a burnt building yielded a tank composed by charred wheat and several farming implements such as two mattocks, a pick, three pitchforks, a goad and one hoe as well as the rhea and the velorta of a plough. Implements and seed for a new but failed farming cycle. Also, the analysis of the structures of adobe pointed at the use of threshes to separate grain from straw. The straw used to build the adobe showed clear cuts produced by the prongs of threshes. All these discoveries prove that the Vacceai had reached an agricultural technology which persisted until the mechanization of farming in the second half of the 20th century. The Vacceai also took advantage of forest resources, especially, acorns. In a house from the Sertorian period a deposit of acorns has been recovered over charred thick planks. The analysis of remains from the surface of circular mills unveils the presence of acorns together with wheat. The classical sources also confirm the existence of this nut. Strabo wrote: "highlanders, during two thirds of the year live on acorns, which they dry and mash and then grind to make bread preserved for indefinite time". Meat is a complement to vegetable resources. The stockbreeding ranch was composed by bovids and ovicaprids as well as suidae and hens. Their diet was completed by resources of venery. THE TEXTILE ACTIVITY The textile activity was one of the most representative crafts in the Vaccean Pintia as evidenced in houses where remains of vertical looms have been identified together with other elements used in weaving works. The classical sources continually references in a characteristic black colour. They were also used as war tributes to the Romans. THE ROMAN PINTIA The Romanization process represented the desertion of many Vaccean towns. This was not the case of Pintia. The town continued existing under the Roman administration. In this period, two big avenues were routed: Decumano and Cardo the latest forked in its southern part that correspond to the 3 doors in the enclosure. In the middle section of Cardo a block that stands out among adjacent constructions could have hosted a bigger building, identified as the Roman forum. In the excavation area the new buildings are very similar to previous ones. The only difference consists in a new foundation system: using a plinth of stonework. The Pax Romana granted Pintia a calm occupation. In these archaeological levels, scarce materials have been found. Besides, these remains show the progressive adoption of new hobbies and manners, purely Roman. The introduction of pottery productions of terra sigillata confirms the integration of Pintia into the trading routes of the Empire. Nevertheless, the town preserves its Vaccean heritage with wheel-thorn painted pottery now known as 'of indigenous tradition'. ANIMAL SACRIFICES IN LAS QUINTANAS The four deposits of sacrificed animals, documented in Pintia show the ideological and religious beliefs of these people. The first deposit yielded the remains of five dogs a cat, four pigs and a sheep. The second contained the remains of a dog two cats and partial remains of a sheep. In the third deposit there were four complete suckling pigs three of them females arranged to the edge of a pit, around a pottery candlestick. The fourth deposit contained an adult sheep. The classical sources refer to these practices among the peoples from the North of the Peninsula. This group of activities represents another mechanism to guarantee the stability and perpetuation of these societies. Within the Celt civilization, animal sacrifices had a magic-religious character with different functions: to please the deities and maintain their favours and protection to repair any offence or affront to the divinities and finally, some of them, with predicting intentions. In the case of Pintia, we can point out that those animals were not consumed in the rituals and funerary feasts so, we can assume that the sacrifice had a propitiatory function. Anyway, these practices, already known in the Second Iron Age become common in the Roman period when these deposits from Pintia were made. Actually, the animals are omnipresent in the Roman religion as symbols, tutelary beings, gods servers or mediators or as the objective of sacrifices. DEATH IN PINTIA The religiousness of any human group expresses the vital necessity of establishing balanced relationships a physical world sometimes hostile, as well as to give a collective answer to death. We are now trying to investigate in this latter sphere by digging into the answers provided for over 1000 years of History in funerary contexts in Pintia approaching the gestures, sensitivities and answers given by these peoples to the universal fact of death. One of the most original aspects of the scene of the Plateau in the mid-millennium BC was the presence of the first cemeteries. THE DEATH FOR THE VACCAEI: A TRIUNE RITE. The Vaccaei adopted the new ritual expressions of death with the election of specific areas to create perfectly delimited necropolises separated from the alive, following an organized growth. This is how the necessity of a funerary ritual is born: following several established patterns it provides a transition to the afterlife and the rest to the deceased so they would not interfere with the world of the alive. This sepulchral area is conceived as a hinge between this world and the next and a place where the alive could worship their ancestors. For the passage from this world to the other a crossing element was needed. This element was, in most cases, but for some exceptional uses, fire. In the Vaccean civilization, there is a tripartite funerary ritual: cremation for common individuals, burial under the houses for younger individuals or the exposure of corpses to vultures for warriors killed in combat. The practice of buring children in domestic environments must be considered in the framework of groups with high infant mortality rates where infants have no social recognition unless they reach a minimum age. The common ritual was cremation. Placed in a wood bonfire the corpse was burnt in the 'ustrinum' located in Los Cenizales just 200 meters away from Las Ruedas necropolis. The remains were selected and introduced in a container usually a pottery pot, and moved to the cemetery. The funerary urn was accompanied by the personal grave goods of the deceased, and other offerings usually pottery containers with different products or specific pieces of different animal species. The grave, once covered, was marked with a stele of limestone brought from the nearby hill of Pajares. The restricted use of certain areas of the cemetery the magnitude of the graves or the number and quality of the items deposited in graves constitute valid references to determine the existence of marked social differences. The archaeological references uncovered so far in Las Ruedas highlight the relevance of the warrior sector and the progressive increase in the amortization of the objects in the graves as the years went by. The grave goods of Pintian warriors traditionally yielded elegant cups which according to the analysis of remains were used as wine containers. In fact, the first records of wine consumption in the inner Iberian Peninsula were found in Pintia. ALSO WARRIORS AFTERLIFE. The Vaccean social structure was conditioned by their world view. Their agonistic lifestyle made them consider death in combat as the culmination of luck in the present world. The text by Claudius Aelianus about the exposure to vultures shows a different access to the ritual, which dispense warriors killed in combat with the purification of fire: "The Vaccaei defame those who die from an illness as they consider their death coward and unmanned and they entrust them to fire; but those who lost their life in war are considered to be noble, brave and courageous so, they are entrusted to vultures as these are sacred animals". Appian explains how the Vaccaei conceived the war giving preference to the personal value materialized in the development of singular combats: "Frequently, a certain barbarian would ride to the area that mediated between the two contenders wearing a wonderful armor and he would challenge any Roman to fight a singular duel and as nobody would accepted to fight, he would mock them performing a triumphal dance, and he would leave." A CHANGING WORLD THE ROMANIZATION PROCCESS Although the Romanization of the Vaccean area is considered effective at the turn of the era it did not represent the abandon of Las Ruedas as its occupation persisted, at least, during the 1st century AC. This is how graves with indigenous manufacture start to incorporate Roman materials which show the gradual transformation of the burial practices. Besides, under the Roman control, new funerary practices arise linked to the equestrian elite: the discoid stelae. The examples preserved from Pintia belong to models which, in some cases, could have reached 1.80 m. in diameter. This gives an idea of their monumental character. The field of the disc includes different bas-relief representations maybe of a lancer horseman, as as the one uncovered in Clunia. One of these funerary steles from Pintia deserves further study. Although it was seriously damaged due to the ploughshare it still preserves remains of epigraphy that, at least, give evidence of the name of the deceased: Atio. NEW CEMETERY OF LAS QUINTANAS. During the Early Roman Empire the distribution of the town is intensely remodeled. The cemetery is moved to an inhabited area of the town of Las Quintanas, completely deserting Las Ruedas cemetery. Up to these days, around 100 burials have been documented in the necropolis of Las Quintanas. The Later Roman Empire has been poorly detected so that most burials correspond to the Hispanian-Visigoth period of the cemetery between the 5th and 7th century AC. The corpses were deposited in a supine position, inside graves or, exceptionally, in stone cists, facing the East which proves that these peoples were clearly Christianized. The reuse of graves was a common practice in this cemetery this indicates that the graves were marked to be seen from the outside and that there were family bonds among those buried in the same place. The archaeological data show a well-defined distribution of the cemetery probably around a nearby church, of an unknown location at the moment. Despite the homogeneous layout of the graves in the cemetery of Las Quintanas different funerary patterns have been observed depending on the genre of the deceased. An especially distinctive feature is the presence of grave goods although minimal, associated in a great majority of male burials. There are other significant differences. Women and children were buried in pits dug in the ground with their bodies possibly protected by a simple shroud. However, men were treated differently. They were placed in coffins or sepulchral spaces prepared with a small ***-wall on which one or several wood boards were arranged. As an exception, only a woman burial follows this pattern. Apart from being buried in a coffin she was accompanied by exceptional silver grave goods. This proves the relevance of this person. The study of the human remains has set new differences between both genres such as the kind of food preferably consumed by men and women or the daily activities developed by ones and the others.