Peñas de la Cerca

Peñas de la Cerca is an Iron Age hillfort, in the province of Zamora, north-western Spain. It is near a hamlet called Rionegrito de Sanabria (municipio of Rosinos de la Requejada). Situated in a mountainous region on the north-western edge of the Northern Sub-Plateau, the site controls the middle of the Tera valley, between the natural shires of Sanabria (high and medium mountain) and Carballeda (plateau). The site was excavated in two consecutive seasons in 2007 and 2008 by the PIDPAPZ project scientific team and supervised by the archaeologists Jose Carlos Sastre Blanco (University of Granada) and Oscar Rodriguez Monterrubio (UNED). Archaeological finds place this site in an intermediate period between the 1st and the 2nd Iron Age about the 7th century BC. It covers an area of around 2 hectares and settlement is distributed on tells, being the highest where a major number of dwelling structures and artefacts have been identified. Excavations and surveys on the site have made possible the identification of several enclosures covering the north slope of the hill where the settlement was constructed. The inhabited zone was complex fortified area with two parallel walls (the internal and the external walls) and an interior highpoint surrounded by another wall (the top-hill wall). A line of more than seven tells (uninhabited) were constructed to alter the surface of the northern slope and to prevent a straight access to the inhabited nucleus, each tell is supported by a constructive wall creating a system of walled tells. The excavation areas 1 and 4 unearthed the real structure of the walls: simple-faced walls with heterogeneous rough stone. This with a linear morphology and an enclosure adapted to the terrain sets the defensive system in Iron Age Chronologies. Without more accurate findings marking a concrete date, the chronology could cover an enormous gap of time similar to what happens in other northwestern Spanish hillforts belonging to the so-called Hillforts culture (Cultura Castreña) Excavation areas 2 and 3, on the second tell between the top-hill wall and the interior wall, had unearthed housing materials and structures related with three different periods of occupation of the settlement.