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The Roman city of Los Bañales is located in the municipality of Uncastillo, in the northern district of the Cinco Villas de Aragón (province of Saragossa, Spain). Situated between the Ebro valley and the Pyrenees, it was initially a stipendiaria urban community which was subsequently granted municipal status in the Flavian Age, belonging to the district of Caesar Augusta (Saragossa). Although its ancient name is unknown, there are several indications that it might have been the Tarraca mentioned by Pliny –who included it among the populi foederati of that district– attributed to the Vascones by Ptolemy and placed between Segia (Ejea de los Caballeros, Saragossa) and Cara (Santacara, Navarre) by Ravenate. Between the Augustan Age and the crisis at the end of the Middle Empire, it was a flourishing city that had embraced the architectural, ornamental and epigraphic programme of Rome, making the most of its excellent location at the head of the Via Caesar Augusta-Beneharnum (Bearn, France), built by the legions of the emperor Augustus between 9 and 5 BC, and the Via Caesar Augusta-Pompelo (Pamplona, Navarre), which seems to have been in use since the reign of Tiberius.
Known since the seventeenth century, when the Portuguese traveller Juan Bautista Labaña reported on its existence, the site became an object of study in the 1940s and 1970s, thanks to the surveys of José Galiay Sarañana and Antonio Beltrán Martínez, respectively. Since the research project of the Uncastillo Foundation got underway in 2009, continuous archaeological work –in addition to prospections and studies of a territorial character– has been carried out for over decade. During that time, it has produced very notable archaeological finds and a heritage management model, with clear public archaeology policies, which has receivedacknowledgements and awards in different events and calls, while also being one of the most visited archaeological sites in the north of the Iberian Peninsula.
With a pre-Roman settlement whose affiliation is still in discussio –Vasconic if Ptolemy is to be believed and in light of the areas onomastics, but Celtiberian in view of the material culture recovered– its life as a city must have begun in about the fifth century BC, when the enclave of El Pueyo de Los Bañales became home to the inhabitants of the small villages in the vicinity, occupied since the Bronze Age and scattered throughout the valleys of the rivers Riguel and Arba. However, it would not be until the coming of the Augustan age, following the foundation of the coloniaCaesar Augusta –in 15/14 BC– and coinciding with the moment when the legions IV Macedonica, VI Victrix and X Gemina were building the aforementioned road between the Ebro and the Pyrenees (CIL, XVII-1; 147; 169-170), that it began to develop.
That was when the citys forum was built, presided by a gallery of equestrian statues certainly in honour of Gaius and Lucius Caesar (HEp5, 916 and AE 2016, 818), but which must have also included statues of other members of the imperial family. The completely excavated forum comprises a square, two double porticos –to the north and to the west– a basilica, a curia and two places of worship, work on which was completed in the Flavian (AE2018, 1000 and 2014, 701-705) and Trajan period (AE 2012, 781-784), thanks to the munificence of important families belonging to the local elite. These families included the Fabii and the Porciae, plus a munificent woman called Pompeia Paulla. The forum also featured a magnificent equestrian statue of the emperor Tiberius, erected in 32 AD by the cavalry officer Q. Sempronius Vitulus (AE 2015, 656, 657 and AE 2016, 819) who, after becoming subpraefectus of the cohors Germanorum was perhaps the most distinguished citizen known in the local prosopography. The sculptural pieces that have been recovered –including a statue of the emperor Domitian, plus a portrait of Germanicus Julius Caesar and undetermined fragments of heroised statues and priuati, some of which are colossal– comprise one of the most outstanding catalogues of statuary in the Vasconic territory as a whole, with a considerable variety of Italic and eastern white marbles.
Judging by a series of epigraphic marks documented on its pillars (HEp 20, 645-654), an aqueduct supplying the city with water from a reservoir close by was also built in the Augustan period. Built of both stone for the pillars and wood –for the channel– very few similar Roman constructions have come down to us. It was also when work began on the orthogonal development of the so-called “northern district which –as with the forum to the south which, visible from the road, served as a showcase –projected the citys architectural majesty– with a great wall marking its northern boundary– towards the valley of the river Riguel. Given its eminently agricultural and commercial character, the city must have been sustained by the uillae dotting the valley until the Late Empire.
In this northern district, excavations have been carried out in part of a domus-type single-family home profusely decorated with frescos, dated to the first century AD, and in the grid of cardines and decumani, on which the layout of the residential area was based, to the south, and also, at a later date, in another of a public nature, but also residential. A large sandstone quarry –the material used to build most of the city– has also been discovered in this district, to which should be added those previously studied in the vicinity of the sections of the aqueduct excavated in rock as riui.
The granting of municipal status to the city in the Flavian Age –deduced from the affiliation of the aforementioned men to the Quirina tribus in a funerary enclosure in its territory, preserved in Sádaba (CIL, II 2973)– must have coincided with the building of the baths which, in an excellent state of conservation, reproduced the floorplan in fashion at the time. With an angular layout, there were two uestibula, a large apodyterium, a tepidarium, a caldarium, with at least a small alueus, and a frigidarium, also equipped with a small plunge pool. As with most of the buildings in the city, they were in use until the second half of the third century AD, a date that has also been obtained from the study of the materials recovered from the areas that have been excavated in recent years, including the forum, the northern district and an area adjacent to the baths, which is of major interest. Reusing a former public building, it seems to have housed a line of tabernae which, among others, included a workshop selling bone objects and another selling food built around several ovens in a good state of conservation. The excavation of this space has allowed for establishing the historical evolution of the city, which went into decline –a paradigm of the so-called oppida labentia– at the end of the rule of Marcus Aurelius and which ended in the abandonment of the city as a whole in the initial decades of the third century AD. Its abandonment was probably preceded by its closure to the imports which had characterised the period between the Augustan and the Flavian Ages, namely, its heyday. The decay of the forums sculptural programmes and the last levels of use of the streets of the northern district also evince the citys slow agony at the end of the Middle Empire.
The city –which, at one point, covered over 20 ha (50 acres)– would be reoccupied, as an incastellamento, in the Visigoth period, which would only affect the highest point of El Pueyo Hill –still barely known, but of which a large fortified tower has survived– and, subsequently, as a hisn in the Islamic period, until the ninth century AD, when the enclave was finally left deserted, after its first abandonment between the third and fourth centuries AD.
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- Presentación
- Santiago Martínez Caballero, Termes
- Margarita Orfila, Pollentia
- Carmen Aranegui Gascó, Saguntum
- Clara Forn Perramón, Pepita Padrós Martí, Baetulo
- Manuel Martín-Bueno, Municipium Augusta Bilbilis
- David Vivó Codina, Gerunda
- Mª. A. Magallón Botaya, P. Sillières, J.A. Asensio Esteban, Ch. Rico, M. Navarro Caballero, Labitolosa
- Marta Santos, Joaquim Tremoleda, Pere Castanyer, Elisa Hernández, Municipium Emporiae
- Angel Morillo Cerdán, Victorino García Marcos, Legio VII Gemina
- José Luis Ramírez Sábada, María García-Barberena Unzu, Pompelo
- Rebeca Rubio Rivera, Ercavica
- Miguel Ángel de la Iglesia Santamaría, Francesc Tuset Bertran, Colonia Clunia Sulpicia
- Jesús García Sánchez, José Manuel Costa-García, Segisamo
- Javier Andreu Pintado, Los Bañales de Uncastillo
- Pedro Rodríguez Oliva, Malaca
- Dario Bernal Casasola, Gades
- Thomas G. Schattner, Munigua
- José Beltrán Fortes, Michael Heinzelmann, Janine Lehmann, Diego Romero Vera, Arne Schröder, Carissa Aurelia
- Salvador Montañés Caballero, María Luisa Loza Azuaga, Asido Caesarina
- Maria del Camino Fuertes Santos, Ategua
- Juan M. Campos Carrasco, Javier Bermejo Meléndez, Onoba Aestuaria
- Javier Bermejo Meléndez, Juan M. Campos Carrasco, Arucci
- Lourdes Roldán Gómez, Juan Blánquez Pérez, Colonia Libertinorum Carteia
- José Ildefonso Ruiz Cecilia, Colonia Genetiva Julia : Urso
- Javier Bermejo Meléndez, Juan M. Campos Carrasco, Ciudades romanas de la Provincia Baetica : una valoración a partir del proyecto CVB
- João Pedro Bernardes, Catarina Viegas, Celso Candeias, Balsa
- Virgílio Lopes, Myrtilis
- Vasco Gil Mantas, Imperatoria Salacia
- Pedro C. Carvalho, Adolfo Fernández, Armando Redentor, Catarina Tente, José Cristóvão, Lidia Fernandes, Ricardo Costeira de Silva, Sofia Lacerda, Tomas Cordero, Igaedis
- Emilio Gamo Pazos, Juan José Gordón Baeza, José María Murciano Calles, Rafael Sabio González, Ángel Villa González, Augustobriga
- Catarina Viegas, João Pedro Bernardes, Rui Roberto de Almeida, Ossonoba
- Pedro C. Carvalho, Pedro Sobral de Carvalho, João Perpétuo, Vissaium