Landscape changes and human activity in Monte Penide (Redondela, Pontevedra): a methodological approach

Abstract

We have surveyed two areas with open air rock art in Monte Penide, finding in the process several artefact scatters near the petro glyphs of roughly the same age. Also, we have undertaken a soil analysis of a section already exposed in one of those places (Coto da Fenteira), looking for occurrences of enrichment in certain trace elements (Ti, Zr, Hg or Br) along the sequence. As a result of this studies in combination with 14C dating of charcoal and organic matter, we have been able to define two main erosive episodes, resulting from human activity: one in the first half of the third millennium BC and a second, less violent one, from the start of the second millennium BC. These episodes have to do mostly with the spread of a farming economy during the Chalcolithic and its consolidation along the Earlier Bronze Age, thus rejecting the notion of a socioeconomic crisis during the latter and showing, instead, a progressive interference with the environment by human groups up to the second Iron Age.