Before the rails, a castro
Vive Cabeceiras · Arco de Baúlhe · interpretação arqueológica

The Arc also has a much older story.

During the Romanization, the villages of the region did not all follow the same path. The Archaeological Letter suggests that the small castro of the Arco de Baúlhe will have lost inhabitants, while Chacim gained centrality. It also refers to the expansion of agricultural occupation to lowlands. This reading helps to imagine a territory in transformation, but does not provide a certain date for the abandonment of the castro of the Arc. The Charter places these changes in the process begun in the second half of the first century before Christ. The transformation was not limited to houses: it also altered the relationship between settlements, fields and centers of power. Chacim appears as a place of population concentration and renewal of spaces, while the Arc is presented as a possible example of emptying. Mó de Cima materials in Chacim are used to support the agricultural occupation of the lowlands. Later, the text highlights open facilities of the couple type, such as Abadim. Read together, these clues show a change in the organization of the territory; they do not allow drawing a single displacement of inhabitants between two points, nor date all changes in the same year.

Sources and context
Archaeological Letter of Cabeceiras de Basto — Protohistory and Romanization
https://cartaarqueologica.cabeceirasdebasto.pt/proto_historia_e_romanizacao.html
Accessed: 2026-11-07

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