The Roman houses of Tongobriga: architecture and cultural change

Abstract

With Augustus, the different regions of Hispania will experience a broad process of cultural standardisation, in which the dissemination of a rather flexible architectural language is recognised, one which makes use of a lexicon of forms originally developed in Italy, although some of its features go back to the Hellenistic traditions of the East. At the southern limit of the conventus Bracaraugustanus, on the banks of the river Tâmega, the city of Tongobriga was founded at the end of the 1st century, whose vestiges show the diversity of its society, originating from an Iron Age settlement, and which in the Roman period fulfilled geostrategic functions, presumably related to the dominion of two important peninsular road, which allowed the connection between the conventus and the capital of Lusitania. Using the Tongobriga dwelling complex, we intend to analyse the application of the Italic architectural lexicon in this privileged provincial context.