The Town Hall of Arnuero hires archaeological survey services at Monte Cincho, with the aim of dating the period during which an ancient Celtic settlement was active and documenting its constructive and social characteristics. The archaeological survey will be carried out by Rubén San Cristóbal Ruiz, of the company ‘Archaeology and Cultural Heritage’, over a period of 4 months from when authorisation has been obtained from the Heritage service of the Department of Culture.
In the past, Monte Cincho, in Arnuero, housed one of the most important Celtic hillforts – fortified settlements from the pre-Roman period and the Iron Age – on the Cantabrian coast. Under this premise, supported by numerous documentary sources, the Town Hall wants to find out more about the characteristics and size of this ancient site, with a view to developing a digitised route with all the information about the settlement by means of augmented reality.
The surface exploration work – under no circumstances will there be excavations – will focus on the area around the summit, a nearly flat plateau where, the remains of the ancient Celtic hillfort can be found. This is how the work of the archaeologist Leopoldo Fernández Agüero has been recorded; he published an article about the Castro del Cincho in the book ‘Castros y Castras en Cantabria’, edited by the Asociación Acanto. In it, he explains how the collapsed remains of the defensive wall can be clearly seen in some areas along the path leading up to the mountain.
This information sparked the interest of the Town Corporation, aware that because of its location, this mountain ridge may have played a key role in the past history of the people of Arnuero, and that we may be looking at one of the most important hillforts on the Cantabrian coast.
Rubén San Cristóbal’s proposal has resulted in awarding work that will include both visual survey – on land of around 45 hectares – and geomagnetic survey (which makes it possible to explore the first meters of the subsoil) over a more specific area of 10 hectares. This is necessary to determine the real extent of the site, the possibility that remains may exist, and to establish the possible characteristics of the hillfort that has since disappeared. The survey will also make it possible to refine the historical dating of the hillfort, which Fernández Agüero, in his article, places at some point in the Iron Age.
After the collection and interpretation of data and the geolocation of the remains in the walled area, the results will be set out in a project and a typological study, enabling documentation to be created in three dimensions, already in a second phase. The aim is not to expose any possible archaeological remains, since we are dealing with a protected natural space in which it is not possible to cut down the holm oaks or reproduce the hillfort ‘on site’. The ultimate goal is to recreate it through virtual reality; for this purpose, a company will be tasked with developing an informative digital tool that will allow a three-dimensional simulation of the hillfort to be viewed.
The initial idea being considered is to mark out two or three points along the path where plaques will be installed with information and QR codes, enabling people to view the Celtic hillfort in augmented reality. One of the points could reproduce the walled area and the entire settlement; another could recreate what the houses from that time were like; and a third could explain how they organised themselves socially—whether they had a square or forum, or common services. Only if the survey were to produce significant evidence for archaeology could an excavation be proposed in a small area that would not cause environmental impact and would be compatible with the conservation of this protected natural space.