Achados e depósitos metálicos do Bronze Final na bacia hidrográfica do rio Ave (NW de Portugal). Considerações espaciais

Abstract

The present work aims to present the metallic sole findings and deposits of bronze objects datable back from the Late Bronze Age known in the river Ave’s hydrographic basin, on the Northwest of Portugal. At the same time, it pretends to propose some interpretations articulating those materialities with three main vectors: settlements, orography and hydrology.
The available data set includes sole findings and groups of objects, sometimes from different typologies, whose discovering conditions lead us to consider them as deposits. Regarding to operational questions the different typologies of objects were divided in distinct groups: tools’ deposits, composite deposits and weaponry deposits. Simultaneously, the presence or absence of different
typologies in a same deposit determined the creation of monotypological and pluritypological categories.
Generally speaking, and given the lack of concrete evidences that may undoubtedly relate these objects or groups of objects with settlements, it seems to prevail their relation with certain natural features, like orographies and water courses or water sources. This connection is understood in the scope of the animist interrelations established between the human communities and the world. The apparent decontextualization of much of these metallic objects, sole or aggregated, indicates their manipulation and amortization in other contexts, denouncing a kind of practice that seems to date back to the Middle Bronze Age.