The Baroña Hillfort Rocky Sanctuary as a Shifting Device Among the World Layers of Celtic Cosmology

The small Iron-Age hillfort of Baroña (Porto do Son, A Coruña, Galicia, Spain) was inhabited during the last centuries BC and is in a singularly hostile environment on a small peninsula facing the Atlantic Ocean at the western end of the Muros-Noia estuary. The habitat is composed by a mere dozen of houses defended by a stunning complex of three lines of massive walls. A large rocky acropolis with faint but clear signs of human activity hangs over the habitat. The study of the acropolis reveals the possibility that they include awareness of the surrounding landscape and relevant moments of the solar cycle. A monumental stairway adjacent to the acropolis leads towards the cliff overlooking the sea and seems aligned with the winter solstice sunset happening on the ocean beyond. Inside the acropolis, the rock that dominates the area presents carved basins and slender petroglyphs related with winter and summer solstice sunrises while the eastern horizon is dominated by Mount Enxa that signals 1st May sunrise from the acropolis. Finally, summer solstice sunrise as seen from the acropolis coincides with an area some 2.5 kilometer away where a panel with petroglyphs presents the only carved representation of the sun in Galicia and some astral calendric relations. We argue that the hillfort’s location seems to be a special place chosen to be a carrefour between the sky, the land, and the sea, i.e. the three elements constituting the Cosmos according to the Celtic tradition and shared by other Indo-European traditions.

Gallaecia. Iron Age. Cultural Astronomy. Celtic Worldview. Hillforts. Rocky Sanctuaires. Rock Carvings.