Roman Camp in Spain Hints Celtic Town Was Burned to Humiliate Its People

Roman soldiers may have burned down a Celtic town in what is now northern Spain to humiliate the people they had already beaten, not simply to win the battle. Archaeologists who found a Roman military camp a short walk from the ruined town say the fire may have been set on purpose.

A camp about 500 meters from the town

The camp was used during the Cantabrian Wars, the campaigns Emperor Augustus fought as he expanded the Roman Empire in the first century B.C. It was uncovered during excavations earlier this year. It stood on an earthen platform about 39 feet (12 meters) wide, surrounded by a stone perimeter wall roughly 5 feet (1.5 meters) thick. The archaeologists described the remains at the camp as well preserved.

The site sits about one-third of a mile (500 meters) from where a settlement was once home to the Cantabri, a group of Celtic tribes who lived among the Cantabrian Mountains of modern-day northern Spain. The archaeologists describe the camp as associated with that hill fort.

Among the finds were fragments of weapons and small iron tacks known as hobnails, which were hammered into the soles of Roman soldiers' leather sandals to give grip on rocky and muddy ground. The archaeologists say these objects are evidence that the Roman military was prepared to attack and subdue the community nearby.

Two temples destroyed in the fire

Digging earlier this year, the team also uncovered evidence of a major fire that had destroyed most of the pre-Roman settlement, including two temples. Eduardo González Gómez de Agüero, an archaeologist at the University of León who co-directed the excavation project, suggested that the Romans may have deliberately set the fire as part of their conquest. He said the aim was not just to defeat the enemy but to humiliate them.

He also said that it is not easy to find a camp connected to a fortified hilltop settlement in this condition. The fire, in other words, was not treated as an accident of war but possibly as a choice about how to treat a defeated people.

A ten-year resistance that ended in 19 B.C.

The Cantabri fiercely resisted Roman rule for a decade, but in 19 B.C. they were conquered by the military commanded by Emperor Augustus. The Cantabrian Wars marked the end of local control over the territory, as the Iberian Peninsula then came under the control of the Roman Empire.

The burned town fits into that ending. Destroying a community's temples and homes was not only a military act, the archaeologists suggest, but a way of showing who was now in charge. That is the heart of the suggestion: the burning came after the fighting, as the Cantabri's long resistance was coming to an end.