Turmodigi

The Turmodigi were a pre-Roman ancient people, later mixed with the Celts people of northern Spain who occupied the area within the Arlanzón and Arlanza river valleys in the 2nd Iron Age. The ancestors of the Turmodigi arrived to the Iberian Peninsula in the wake of the earlier Autrigones-Belgae migration at the 4th Century BC, which settled in the area between the Arlanzón and Arlanza rivers. The neighbouring tribes surrounding the Turmodigi are mentioned by classic sources as being Celtic, as attested by the personal name 'Tormogus' in some local epigraphic sources. Designated Turmodigi by the Roman geographer Pliny the Elder, they are also mentioned in other Roman texts under the names Turmogi or Curgoni, and in the Greek ones as Murbogoioi or Mourbogoi (Ancient Greek: Μούρβογοι). Archeology has related them with the early Iron Age ‘Bernorio-Miraveche’ cultural group of northern Burgos and Palencia provinces. Moreover, recent studies carried out at their most famed cemetery of Miraveche and as well as other 2nd Iron Age sites in the region indicates that their culture was heavily celtiberianized, demonstrating also strong affinities with the ‘Duero Culture’ of the Vaccei. In the 2nd Century BC they established a state with Segisama, also named Segisamone or Segisamum (Sasamón – Burgos; Celtiberian mint: Sekisamos) as its capital, along with the towns of Sisaraca/Pisoraca (Herrera de Pisuerga – Palencia), Deobrigula/Teobrigula (Tardajos – Burgos), Ambisna (Pampliega?– Burgos), Bravum/Bravon (Huermeces, Ubierna or La Nuez de Abajo, in the Santibañez valley – Burgos), and Mancellus (near Lerma, in the Arlanza river valley). The attribution of Pisoraca to the Turmodigi is under discussion, being attributed to the Cantabri peoples in the latest studies. Initially a client tribe of the Autrigones, the Turmodigi threw off their yoke with the help of the Vaccei around the early 3rd Century BC, seizing most of the former's lands corresponding today to the central and western Burgos province and the eastern Palencia province.