Portal de Turismo de Castilla y León

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December 10, 2026

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Lecture by Carlos Sanz Mínguez , director of the Federico Wattenberg Vaccean Studies Centre of the University of Valladolid and co-director of the research projects in the Pintia Archaeological Zone and on the hill of El Viso ( Vaccea sub manto Viso ).

How does an agrarian society, deeply rooted in its territory, react when it suddenly becomes the target of the greatest empires of the Mediterranean? This lecture offers an immersion into the perspective of the Vaccaei people , analyzing their way of life and the profound social, economic, and human crisis their communities suffered when faced with a level of violence and scale of warfare completely unknown until then in the Duero Valley.

Through material records and the latest findings in the archaeology of conflict, this presentation will reconstruct daily life in the great Vaccaean fortresses and how it was affected by the new crisis. The stratigraphy of the soil reveals the scars of this historical trauma: from fire levels to documented siege systems and encampment structures.

The campaign of the Carthaginian Hannibal Barca against Arbucala (220 BC)—whose identification with the hill of El Viso in Bamba (Zamora) seems likely—is part of the prelude to the Second Punic War. Meanwhile, the attack of Scipio Aemilianus against Pintia falls within the context of the Numantine War (143-133 BC).

Neither military campaign sought the definitive subjugation of the Vaccaei, but rather their most prized possession: their fertile grain fields. Scipio also employed the concept of "punitive warfare" by burning the easternmost Vaccaei cities and their crops, in order to prevent the besieged Numantians from receiving supplies.

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