Ferreira do Alentejo: os Romanos numa encruzilhada?

Abstract

The territory of Ferreira do Alentejo is situated between Pax Iulia (Beja) and Salacia (Alcácer do Sal), in the Lusitanian conventus Pacensis. Is near also to the so-called «Sudoeste Alentejano», where prospered, in the Iron Age, a strange civilisation that had also an strange pre-roman language, already not deciphered today. In this paper, I try to demonstrate that this Ferreira do Alentejo’s territory at the Roman period, with various villae not yet excavated and with singular epigraphic monuments, was surely in one eminent cross-way: at west, the mineral exploration and a traditional lifestyle; at east, the urban life of Pax Iulia. The few epigraphic monuments conserved have, in this moment, a very difficult lecture and interpretation, but their decoration let us remember some pre-roman decoration. In other hand, in the epigraphic texts one nomen is very present: Mummius. I think that was one of the more important families in the region at the Roman period.