Established after the elaboration of the Municipality of Lousada's Archaeological Chart in 1992, the Municipal Archaeology Department was created with the intention of following the survey, study and management of the municipality's archaeological patrimony.
Presently, the Archaeology Department is constituted by one specialized technical team, depending on the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Tourism and Social Action.
Over more than a decade, the Archaeology Department has endeavoured a set of selective interventions, destined to promote and spread the scientific investigation in the municipality of Lousada's geographic area. From these works, the majority of which fit chronologically in the Iron Age and in the Roman period, we point out some excavation campaigns done since the mid 90s in S. Domingos, commonly known as Mount of S. Domingos, located in the parish of Cristelos; the intervention in the "Roman House", also in the parish of Cristelos; and also the investigations developed in Quinta dos Padrões (parish of Meinedo), following the Archaeological Impact Study for the widening of the Douro Railroad.
Currently, the archaeological works developed by the Department of Municipal Archaeology are guided by a set of projects considered essential to the future of municipal archaeology, namely the revising of the Municipality de Lousada's Archaeological Chart, project in the scope of the revision of the Municipal Director Plan; and the creation of the Mountain Range of Campelos' Arqueo-Environmental Centre, project submitted to the Portuguese Institute of Archaeology and presently in its appreciation phase. Asides from these work areas, the Archaeology Department has also come to develop, in connection with the municipal service technicians, interventions destined to safeguard and preserve the spotted archaeological patrimony in the context of the archaeological accompaniment of municipal works, like recently in mount of Outeiro (parish of Nespereira), where a set of vestiges from a rural habitat with a presumable occupation dating from the 16th-17th centuries was exhumed.