A seventh-century BC domestic sanctuary devoted to Hathor-Ashtart at Cerro de San Vicente (Salamanca, Spain)

This article presents the major outcomes from the excavations undertaken in 2022 at the site of Cerro de San Vicente (Salamanca), enlarging the area unearthed in 2021. The paper discusses the diachronic sequence of this setting and its functional and social interpretation. Household religion is addressed via several cult buildings and a large repertoire of liturgical objects: wheel-thrown painted Egyptian or Levantine and Phoenician red-slip tableware, a faience piece of inlay and faience beads featuring oriental iconography, local terracotta, burners, and tableware with orientalizing motifs, etc. In addition, new indicators of aristocratic practices stand out: instruments for high-quality handicrafts -pottery and textile work- and two equestrian bone items of harnesses. Cooking with ceramic trays and portable tandoor-like stoves, specialized crafts, domestic cults, and buildings refer, as a whole, to the Mediterranean koine. All these lines of evidence lead to interpret the excavated sector as a domestic sanctuary dedicated to a female deity -likely a local expression of Hathor-Ashtart- integrated into the neighbourhood of a central courtyard compound occupied by a multi-family virilocal residential group. The article reclaims the key role of the women of that broad and high-ranking corporate social unit in the transmission and performance of know-how and practices of spiritual and material maintenance.