After the fire: the end of a house life-cycle at the Iron Age site of Nabás (North-western Iberia)

The existence of a fire event at the Iron Age hillfort of Nabás, which is located on the southern bank of the Ría de Vigo (Galicia, NW of the Iberian Peninsula), favoured an extraordinary preservation of carbonised plant remains and offered an unusual opportunity to focus our research on the study of the final episode of a house life-cycle. The archaeobotanical approach focused on perishable materials combining charcoal, with carpology and pollen analysis, in tandem with a taphonomic assessment. The charcoal assemblage includes charcoal without signs of working, and wooden manufactures although the former group was probably related to the roof and timber of the round-house. This interpretation is based on the size and concentration of charcoal fragments, as well as the short taxonomic list (deciduous and evergreen Quercus sp., Fabaceae, Corylus avellana, Rosaceae/Maloideae, Salix/Populus, Alnus sp., Frangula alnus, Betula sp., Phragmites/Arundo and Ulmus sp.), and the recurrence of biological alterations such as xylophages’ galleries and hyphae. Aggregated grains and chaff of foxtail millet (Setaria italica) were found in several samples suggesting their storage, probably inside an organic container. Finally, pollen analysis offered clues about the uses of plants such as Ericaceae during the occupation phase of the round-house.María Martín-Seijo was funded by a Post-Doc Grant Plan I2C mod. B with the project “MATERIAL-Materiality and Material Culture: Wood and Other Plant-based Materials in Archaeological Contexts” and Andrés Currás was funded by the Xunta de Galicia under the GAIN Postdoctoral Program. The excavation of Nabás, led by MMS in 2006, was funded by the Consellería de Cultura-Xunta de Galicia (2006-CP035). Charcoal and carpological analyses were undertaken at the Laboratory of the Study Group for the Prehistory of NW Iberia-Archaeology, Antiquity and Territory (GEPN-AAT) and pollen analysis at the SERP-Universitat de Barcelona