Astures

The Asturian homeland encompassed the modern autonomous community of Asturias and the León, eastern Lugo, Orense, and northern Zamora provinces, along with the northeastern tip of the Portuguese region of Trás-os-Montes.

The Transmontani, placed between the Navia River and the central massif of the Picos de Europa, comprised the Iburri, Luggones, Paesici, Paenii, Saelini, Vinciani, Viromenici and Baedunienses; the Cismontani included the Amaci [es], Cabruagenigi, Lancienses, Lougei, Tiburi, Brigaecini, Orniaci, Superatii, Gigurri, Zoelae and Susarri (which dwelled around Asturica Augusta, in the Astura river valley, and was the main Astur town in Roman times).

[5] The Astures were vigorous hunter-gatherer highlanders who raided Roman outposts in the lowlands; a reputation enhanced by ancient authors, such as Florus ("Duae validissmae gentes, Cantabriae et Astures, immunes imperii agitabant")[9] and Paulus Orosius ("duas fortissimas Hispaniae gentes"),[10] but archeological evidence confirms that they also engaged in stock-raising in mountain pastures, complemented by subsistence farming on the slopes and in the lower valleys.

During a large part of the year they used acorns as a staple food source, drying and powdering them and using the flour for a type of easily preserved bread; from their few sown fields that they had during the pre-Roman period, they harvested barley from which they produced beer (Zythos),[12] as well as wheat and flax.

[18] Led by Gausón, a former mercenary commander, the Astures joined forces with the Cantabri to resist Emperor Augustus's conquest of the whole of the Iberian northwest, even backing an unsuccessful Vaccaei revolt in 29 BC.

[21] The reduction of the remaining Asture holdouts was entrusted to Publius Carisius, the legate of Lusitania, who, after managing to trap Gauson and the remnants of his troops at the hillfort of Lancia, subsequently forced them to surrender when he threatened to set fire to the town.

[5] As far as the official Roman history was concerned, the fall of this last redoubt marked the conclusion of the conquest of the Asturian lands, which henceforth were included alongside Gallaecia and Cantabria into the new Transduriana Province under the suffect consul Lucius Sestius Albanianus Quirinalis.

In spite of the harsh pacification policies implemented by Augustus, the Asturian country remained an unstable region subjected to sporadic revolts – often carried out in collusion with the Cantabri – and persistent guerrilla activity that kept the Roman occupation forces busy until the mid-1st century AD.

However, the Astures continued to rebel, with King Wamba sending an expedition to the Asturian lands only twenty years before the Muslim invasion of the peninsula and the fall of the Visigothic kingdom.