In spite of the fact that, currently, these Paleolithic finds have become Portugal’s internationally best-known archaeological sites, most archaeology practiced in the country since 1800 has dealt principally with the later prehistoric periods and the era of Roman rule. Extensive excavations were carried out beginning in the mid-nineteenth century in the numerous castros (Iron Age hill-forts) of northern Portugal, the pioneer work of Martins Sarmento in the Citânia de Briteiros being of paramount importance in this regard. Other approaches tried to bring together archaeology, ethnography, and linguistics to procure a better understanding of the pre-Roman peoples of Portugal, and it was under the influence of such a program that the National Museum of Archaeology was founded, in the late 1800s, by J. Leite de Vasconcelos. Several fortified sites from the Copper and Bronze Ages were also extensively excavated in the twentieth century in central and southern Portugal. A good example is the site of Zambujal, first excavated by H. Schubart in the 1960s, which also well illustrates the role played by German archaeologists in this research (a delegation of the deutsches archäologisches institut existed in Lisbon for some thirty years, until 1998), in the wake of the megalithic inventories made by Georg and Vera Leisner in war and postwar times. The most important methodological innovation of the postwar period, however, the introduction of sir mortimer wheeler’s grid method, is due to E. Cunha Serrão, an active amateur who eventually would become the president of the Associação dos Arqueólogos Portugueses, founded in 1863.

Given the richness of the empirical record, including some of the largest dolmens known (such as the Anta Grande do Zambujeiro), megalithic research has been pursued by many Portuguese archaeologists and has become a popular research topic since 1970. As a result and although the clarification of chronological issues is still a major concern, attention has progressively shifted toward issues of spatial and landscape archaeology. Attempts at integrating the study of the funerary and other ritual monuments (menhirs and cromlechs) with the survey for and investigation of the contemporary settlement sites are commonplace in current Neolithic research. Indigenist views of the development of megalithic phenomenon as part of the increasing complexity of the first agricultural societies of Europe have also been completely removed from the debate. These comprised interpretations, common until the 1970s, that related it to oriental influences. But the issue of colonization is far from being settled, especially with regard to the large Copper Age hill-forts that spread through central and southern Portugal in the third millennium b.c.

Until quite recently in Portuguese archaeology, however, most efforts and resources were dedicated to the study of Roman antiquities. The most consistent archaeological project throughout the twentieth century was the excavation of the city of Conimbriga, and this was largely due to the commitment of the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Coimbra. Other sites, major by Portuguese standards but of relatively minor importance by international standards, have also been investigated, albeit to a lesser extent. Tróia, one of the largest industrial complexes connected to the processing of fish in the Roman world, is still largely unknown after 150 years of very discontinuous research. Since 1980 the development of salvage archaeology in urban environments has led to a major broadening of our knowledge of the Roman cities of Portugal, and this is especially the case with Braga (Bracara Augusta), but most of this work remains unpublished. Largely as a result of the same phenomenon, medieval archaeology and especially the archaeology of the period of Islamic rule are currently undergoing an explosion in terms of finds and resources devoted to their study. The same is true with underwater archaeology, and the fact that preliminary surveys have become mandatory in harbor works and humid areas has led to significant discoveries. These comprise, in continental Portugal as well as in the Azores, fifteenth-century vessels and their cargo; as a result, for the first time, the physical documentation of the construction of the caravels that pioneered European overseas expansion has been possible.

Several universities offer training in archaeology within the framework of their departments