The Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro is a Chalcolithic archaeological site in the civil parish of Vila Nova de São Pedro, municipality of Azambuja, in the Portuguese Estremadura area of Lezíria do Tejo. It is important for the discovery of thousands of arrowheads within its fortified settlement, associated with the Chalcolithic period of human settlement. associated with the long-lived fortified town, or castro, of Zambujal, near the municipality of Torres Vedras. The period of "urban" settlement lasted from 2600 to 1300 BCE, and was a contemporary of the southeastern Spanish settlements of Los Millares and El Argar. Architecture The rural site, is located on a small hilltop dominated by the ruins of a castle, and intersected in the north, east and west by the Ribeira de Alcoentre, Ribeira do Carrascal and Ribeira do Massuca (respectively). The castro settlement was built during two phases: initially (associated with the Vila Nova de São Pedro I or VNSP I culture), an open settlement; followed by a fortified settlement (VSNP 2) encircled by wall of rocks (covered in clay). Within its perimeter are the vestiges of a semi-circular domed oven/kiln, alongside a limestone space and cistern. Many of these pre-existing structures were dismantled and/or destroyed during a phase of settlement (VNSP III), followed by a fourth period of occupation which resulted in another phase of destruction (VNSP IV), leading to the construction of a new system of defense. The oven and ancillary space (where was discovered full of pottery from the VSNP 2 era) constitutes a group associated with the industrial fabrication of ceramics, receiving water from the cistern for its operation. These structures were destroyed and substituted for new spaces (VNSP III) when the spaces were expropriated for the metallurgic manufacture of copper, spinning and weaving, and the manufacture of dairy products, etc. History The southwestern region of the Iberian peninsula is a focus of Megalithism, predating by 1000 years the megalithic region of western France: The erection of dolmens, menhirs and castros developed over a long period of southern and central Portugal. At about the beginning of the 3rd millennium BCE, contemporaneous with metallurgy associated with the copper and precious metals, new types of tomb-building appeared in the western Mediterranean regions. There has been some debate as to whether these developments originated in the Eastern Mediterranean or whether they are independent of these cultures, although there is little evidence to