Story

In 1758, an inquiry to the parish priests sought to gather information about the Portuguese parishes. According to the presentation of the Museum of Lands of Basto, it was organized in three major themes: land, mountains and river. By disseminating the texts in 2011, the Museum explained that it had updated the language to make them more accessible to students. Reading a transcript is therefore also to know the work of who made the document readable to other readers.

The municipal presentation of the village describes stone houses and some stalk covers. It also recalls the name Casal da Urzeira, associated with the heather of the hills. There are two ways to read the connection between the village and the landscape: in the materials of the houses and in the memory of the name. The same description associates the village with agriculture, animal husbandry and the work of flax and wool. The portrait helps relate houses, fields and crafts. It's an asset presentation, without confirming how many hives remain today.

The municipal inventory describes mamoas in Portela de Asnela, in Rio Douro, and proposes a relationship with the village of Castelo, in Formigueiro, about a kilometer north. Proximity supports a hypothesis; it does not in itself prove that the two sets were used by the same community.

The fiche identifies structures of the anther and cyst type within the funerary assembly. It proposes a dating in the second or first millennium before Christ, supported by ceramic materials and in comparison with similar sets of the Northwest mountains.

There are therefore two distinct questions: when will these monuments have been built and what connection could they have had with the nearby village? A proposal for chronology does not automatically solve the second. The inventory presents this connection as a hypothesis, preserving space for future research.

In May 1758, the vicar of Vila Nune registered 55 neighbors and 239 people. He numbered fourteen places, some with only one resident, and marked uninhabited houses in the place of Serra.

These numbers describe different categories of the document. They should not be added or confused with a current census. The small scale of the places helps imagine a scattered settlement, observed from the parish.

The enumeration allows to approach the look: Silva assigns eight neighbors; to Vale and Rossada, five to each. Fojães and Ribeira da Covilhã appear with one resident. The church was in Granja, near the Valley. The religious center was not confused, therefore, with the place called Vila Nune.

The vicar Domingos Leite de Andrade adds that there were unmarried women in poverty between neighbors and people from other parishes. It is the social description of an author and of a time, without allowing the life of each person to be reconstructed. By preserving the terms and date, the document allows different domestic conditions to be observed within the small places.

The PDM inventory of 2026 brings together three archaeological references in Outeiro: the Medieval Sepulturas da Mata Santa, the Shelter of the Serra da Penouta and Outeiro of Pena.

The Santa Forest appears as a medieval necropolis. Penouta shelter is attributed to Neolithic/Calcolithic; Outeiro of Pena appears as shelter/atalaya, with the indication Prehistory/Media. These are categories and periods of inventory, not three exact dates of construction.

These entries open a longer story than the explanation of the name of the parish. They do not demonstrate continuous occupation between the indicated periods, nor do they establish a link between the graves and the sculpture of Santa Maria. The documentary reference also does not confirm conditions of visit.