Program > By author > Ruano Lucía

The site of Las Cogotas is the paragon of the Late Bronze Age in the Spanish plateau and practically in all Iberia. Las Cogotas is a hillfort located near the city of Ávila, just over a hundred kilometres north of Madrid. It was archaeologically known thanks to the massive excavations undertaken by a well-known Spanish archaeologist, Juan Cabré, in the 1920s. Of these, Las Cogotas shows two attached enclosures. The northernmost one, which includes the two napes, with an occupation of the LBA and IA, and the southernmost one, which would provide dates for the end of the IA. Recent excavations confirmed an occupation of the Late Iron Age and its abandonment before, or when, Rome arrives in the region. However, LBA ceramics were found in large areas of the upper enclosure, always without contextual relationship with any construction. An eventual reading of its walls, carried out during a massive restoration work during the first years of this millennium, was published as a proposal for the identification of a walled enclosure from the Bronze Age. Our research has confirmed this possibility and has advanced in the recognition of a LBA walled site through the application of non-invasive archaeological techniques, such as the use of LiDAR images, and reconstruction of the palaeo-landscape.