Subsistence change during the Romanisation of southern Portugal: Regional patterns and new zooarchaeological evidence from Roman Republican Castelo Velho de Safara

The cultural and economic transition from the Late Iron Age to the Roman Republican period in the Iberian Peninsula, often termed ‘Romanisation’, involved the Roman pacification of Iron Age communities between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE. This transition can be traced through changes in subsistence practices, yet the lack of detailed comparative research in southern Portugal has limited regional interpretations. This study presents results from the analysis of Roman Republican faunal remains from Castelo Velho de Safara (CVS), a fortified Iron Age settlement in Portugal’s southern Alentejo region repurposed by the Roman military to control indigenous populations. Using established zooarchaeological methods to analyse material from CVS and comparing these results with faunal data from multi-period Iron Age and Roman Republican sites across southern Portugal, this study explores how animal exploitation experienced change or continuity following Roman arrival. A subsistence shift is discovered, most prominently marked by an increase in wild taxa in Roman Republican assemblages. These findings indicate that Romanisation involved the creation of a regional pattern largely reliant on wild resource use, rather than the introduction of a typical Roman diet or continuation of a Late Iron Age diet. While a homogenous process of Romanisation is apparent in southern Portugal, an environmentally driven sub-regional model of subsistence change is also proposed to explain geographic variations in caprid and deer abundance within assemblages. These zooarchaeological insights contribute to wider debates on the nature of Romanisation in the Iberian Peninsula.