Este artículo presenta los datos arqueológicos recuperados en las excavaciones del poblado castreño de El Castru, en Vigaña (Balmonte de Miranda, Asturias) realizadas en 2012 y 2013. Dicho yacimiento constituye un buen ejemplo de los pequeños castros de la Edad del Hierro en las montañas del área occidental cantábrica. Por ello, el análisis de las informaciones obtenidas y su contextualización a escala regional ofrecen interesantes aportaciones al debate sobre las formas de poblamiento y subsistencia adoptadas por las comunidades del I milenio a.C. en el Noroeste ibérico.

In this article we present and discuss the archaeological data obtained in the 2012 and 2013 excavations carried out in the hillfort of El Castru, in Vigaña (Balmonte de Miranda, Asturias, NW Iberia). The excavations have showed a long-sequence occupation of the hillfort since the Early Iron Age to the early Roman period. The site constitutes a good example of the small Iron Age hillforts of the western Cantabrian Mountains.
For this reason, the analysis of the information collected during fieldwork and its contextualization at regional level provide us with interesting
considerations for discussing about the settlement patterns and subsistence systems adopted by the I millennia BC communities in NW Iberia.
The manuscript is opened by a general overview of the hillfort, including a contextualisation of its surrounding landscape. Then, a detailed
description of the six stratigraphic phases we identified during the excavations is presented, paying attention to the stratigraphic relations between different layers and structures. In addition, five radiocarbon dates are presented to build up the chronology of the site. Three huts and metallurgical production areas were explored, resulting on a significant collection of materials. The structures and layers that create each
stratigraphic group are characterised considering a broad discussion about the archaeological materials that were discovered through the excavations, paying particular attention to pottery assemblages. The study and discussion of an outstanding zooarchaeological remains collection, some seeds and four pollen samples offers a relevant window to understand the anthropization of the surrounding landscape along the biography of this site. Diverse agricultural activities were developed in connection with a complex arrangement of pastoralist strategies, where we envision a growing specialization on cattle herding along the biography of this site, while agriculture is based in a wide range of complementary crops including several types of cereals. The discussion of these data considering Landscape Archaeology as our theoretical
and methodological framework becomes a relevant case study in the geographical context of the western Cantabrian Mountains, where we lack this kind of approaches.
The archaeological dataset under examination in El Castru allows us to argue that the small peasant community who inhabited the hillfort along the Iron Age and the earlier decades of the Roman period could be characterised particularly by their socio-political autonomy and productive self-sufficiency. This way, we understand Iron Age social landscapes in this area under the umbrella of non-hierarchical models for social organisation, such as heterarchical societies or ‘deep rural communities’, following some of the interpretations recently raised by several scholars in NW Iberia.