Program > By author > Calvo Hernández Clara

Since the first Iron Age settlement in Navarre was found in the 1950s, the vision of domestic architecture has not changed in any significant aspect. It is said systematically that during the Early Iron Age housing structures were rectangular and were built indistinctly in adobe or rammed earth walls with, in most of the cases, a stone plinth as foundation and a vegetal thatch sustained by wooden posts alongside the longitudinal axis of the house. That same interpretation was given for the structures unearthed in the 1980s in the settlement of El Castillar (Spain). However, the new research project on this settlement, which began in 2016, has revealed a slightly more complex reality. The study of several architectural remains discovered during these last five years has proven the coexistence of the mudbricks with other techniques, such as the wattle and daub and kneaded mud (among others) in the same domestic structure. The selection of each technique depended on the structural and domestic needs, which provides a new range of information about internal organization, finishings, thermic isolation, etc.