Landscape Relationships in the Durius River Valley in the Late Iron Age and Early Roman Period

Strabo describes the landscapes and peoples of northern Iberia as wild, intractable and remote, thereby viewing humankind through the lens of environmental determinism. This perspective homogenises local experiences and overlooks topographical complexities. This chapter therefore challenges Strabo’s perspective by exploring the interaction between local agency and the physical environment in one of the areas covered by his account – the Durius (Duero/ Douro) River Valley – to achieve a more nuanced understanding of local landscape relationships. It compares settlement patterns, communication networks, and land use in the Upper and Lower Durius in the late Iron age and early Roman period. It demonstrates that local behaviours were not simply governed by the nature of the landscape, and that local communities were far more connected than Strabo suggests by human-made and natural routes, including the Durius itself. Despite the intensified exploitation of the natural environment under the Roman Empire, the chapter shows that landscape relationships were not always fundamentally different in the first two centuries AD from those of the late Iron Age. Finally, the chapter calls for more consideration to be given to the language used to describe landscape relationships to avoid simply presenting human behaviours as predetermined by the physical environment.