The castro of A Lanzada is a fortified village from the 8th century BC . It contains a necropolis that was used until the 3rd - 4th centuries AD
It is located in the parish of Noalla ( Sanxenxo ), and sits on the base of a point that enters the sea, in the vicinity of the remains of a medieval fortress, known as the tower of A Lanzada . At the western end stands the chapel of Our Lady of the Thrown .
The castro was first excavated in the 1950s by the Museum of Pontevedra and by the hand of Filgueira Valverde , and since then has been the subject of successive excavations (in the 70s, by Francisco Fariña Busto , and in 1983 , by de la Peña Santos ) until the resumption of its recovery in the summer of 2010 . On this last occasion the director of the project was the archaeologist of the Provincial Council of Pontevedra Rafael Mª Rodríguez Martínez with the collaboration of the Heritage Laboratory of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).
Being covered with sand, less aggressive than the earth for organic remains, it is well preserved, which did not prevent its partial destruction to raise the bridge that connects the promontory with the immediate islet or the consequence of modern constructions. The chapel of A Lanzada itself is built on the remains of the castro. In any case, after the last intervention in 2010 it was only accessed to the level corresponding to the second century BC , estimating that there are still about 2-3 meters to dig. Likewise, the studied area is only a small part of the estimated 9,000 m² occupied.
The oldest remains can be dated to the Late Bronze Age , from pottery fragments found about 4 meters deep, in a statigraphic cut that was made in the 1969-1972 campaigns, although the extent explored has been greatly reduced. These remains were found in the so-called outer sector (east of the road), an area currently occupied by newly built houses. This outer sector featured constructions and burials dating back to the 3rd century BC, and lacked defensive elements (walls or fortifications). In this century, apparently as a result of a fire as observed in the third and fourth levels, that location was abandoned to keep inhabited the area of ??the coastal promontory, between the road and the sea, which is the castro currently visible and visitable.
The main feature of this settlement is that it was a very active commercial enclave from 800 years before our era until the sixth century AD. C. Show this maritime trade is the finding of ceramic Ibiza and even from Egypt , Tunisia , Lebanon , Palestine and Turkey . Xurxo Ayán , one of the archaeologists of the props, described the castro as an English Court of the time, which operated for about 1,500 years, centuries after the disappearance of the Roman Empire .
The first documented references to the castro date back to the 18th century and come from Father Sarmiento who, in different writings, as such in his Work of 660 sheets (1762-1766), makes drawings of the tip of A Lanzada and descriptions of what he saw, in which he notes " here were discovered nine graves " . Sarmiento also speaks of a Roman altar, the chapel and what he described as a Roman lighthouse.
In 1949 , the works to widen the coastal road from Sanxenxo to Grove revealed several bone remains, so the Museum of Pontevedra organized an excavation campaign, led by Filgueira Valverde and in which Sánchez Cantón also took part . In this campaign a Roman house, the necropolis was discovered and the medieval stratum was excavated . The remains found in this excavation are preserved in the Museum of Pontevedra.
There is a legend in Noalla according to which the Holy Company left from here towards the islands Ons , legend that can match the knowledge of these secular burials .
Another local legend relates this necropolis to the nearby place of Mourelos , in the same parish of Noalla. Legend has it that this place was inhabited by the Moors and that something happened to them because there was a walk in which a large number of them died and were buried in the Campo da Lanzada.
The settlement was abandoned until in the seventies new prospecting work was carried out which showed that the burial extended along the east side of the road, which was called the outer sector to differentiate it from the west, between the road and the sea, which they called Campo da Lanzada . It was excavated again, in a rapid intervention promoted by the construction of an urbanization on that outer area, in 1983, this time under the direction of Antonio de la Peña Santos . Since then it has been abandoned again until 2010.
In the summer of 2010 the excavation was restarted, in the so-called "Pousadas Xardín do Salnés" program and thanks to the ERDF Funds , within a broad project to create a series of accessible tourism infrastructures . In this sense, it should be noted that this last campaign was carried out in an open door policy that allowed residents and tourists to access the site and participate in guided tours, complemented by a long series of conferences ( shuttle talks ) given in the same place throughout the second semester of 2010.
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