Conference at the National Archaeological Museum in Spain: ‘IACAM: Investigating cultural transitions and changes in the rural world of the Portuguese Alentejo’
It was presented on 23 January 2024, in the Conference Room of the National Archaeological Museum of Spain, in Madrid, by the scientific directors of the IACAM Project (Archaeological Intervention at Cercas das Alcarias de Mesquita – Mértola/Portugal. From Hispania to al-Andalus: arabisation and resistance in rural areas) Bilal Sarr Marroco (University of Granada) and Maria de Fátima Palma (Mértola Archaeological Site/CEAACP), the conference ‘IACAM: Investigating cultural transitions and changes in the rural world of the Portuguese Alentejo‘. This project analyses a key period for understanding the history and archaeology of the western Iberian Peninsula, such as the transition from the late antique to the medieval world, which in the case of Hispania involves passing from a proto-feudal and Christian society to an Islamic one, through an archaeological site – Cerca de Alcarias de Mesquita (Portugal) – located in a rural area. The archaeological proposals and excavations made it possible to document, on the one hand, a funerary area and a large building, and, on the other, a series of housing structures that would form part of a dispersed and extended habitat settlement(qarya) that would have been occupied from at least the 11th to the 13th century.