Beside and within the walls of Reccopolis: social dynamics and landscape transformations of a new Visigothic urban foundation

Abstract

Reccopolis is the sole archaeologically-attested Visigothic city foundation in the Iberian Peninsula. Created under King Leovigild in A.D. 576, the city played a notable role in the landscape, persisting as the focal point of the territory through to the 8th century AD. This paper offers an overview of the most recent results from the project undertaken in and around Reccopolis, which in the last two decades has drawn much from the discipline of Landscape Archeology, enabling fuller understanding of the agrosystem, the character and structure of rural occupation and exploitation, and a developed awareness of environmental conditions across the Early Middle Ages in the territory of the Central Plateau of the Iberian Peninsula.

Keywords

• Iberian Peninsula
• Urban centre
• Landscape Archaeology
• Early Medieval Ages