Munigua
In: Hispania Antigua. Arqueológica: 14, 2022
DOI: 10.48255/9788891327734.17
Munigua is located in the foothills of the Sierra Morena about 10 km north of todays Villanueva del Río y Minas in the province of Seville. It has been known to science by name since the 16th century. The Turdetan predecessor settlement may have been called Munigua. The ancient city was abandoned by its inhabitants in the course of Late Antiquity. The reasons for this can be assumed to be the repeated earthquakes that struck the municipality in the 3rd century AD, as well as the lack of technical knowledge for the further exploitation of the metal deposits in the surrounding area. The city, as the most important copper and iron producer in the lower Guadalquivir valley, thus lost its economic basis.
The preserved remains essentially reflect the cityscape in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The Flavian period must be considered the citys heyday, when most of the sacred, public and private buildings were erected. The period coincides with the reign of Domitian, which is generally of great importance because it was in this period that the legal framework for the respective municipal law was established. A portrait of this emperor has been found in Munigua.
The money for the construction of the buildings was earned on site through metal extraction and smelting. This conclusion is reached when the square metres of enclosed space are put into relation with the size of the slag heaps. In fact, the slag heaps reached their greatest thickness precisely during this period. As can be seen, the city was heavily dependent on its ores and their metals as well as their smelting.
Munigua is distinguished by a number of special features, the first of which is its miniature size of 3.8 ha.However, only about half of this area was really available for buildings, as the other half was occupied by part of the necropolis, which thus lies within the walls. This observation leads to the question of the city boundary, because it cannot be identical with the course of the walls.
As small as the city is, however, its public buildings are amazingly complete and varied. On the one hand, there are the sacred buildings such as the imposing Terrace Sanctuary on the top of the city hill, the Podium Temple halfway up the hill, the Forum Temple, the Mercury Temple, the Sanctuary for Dis Pater in the Forum andpossibly a Nymphaeum in the Thermae. Public buildings are the Forum as well as the Double-Storey Hall and the Thermae. Of the houses, a dozen are now known, half of which have been excavated. All these buildings originate from a single Flavian construction phase, which began in the second half of the 1st century AD and continued for one and a half generations until the beginning of the 2nd century AD. An increase can be observed around the year 70 AD. In order to carry out the construction work, older building fabric was rigorously demolished and levelled, so that the erection of the Roman Munigua meant the complete new construction of the city. This means that not a single building remained from the previous settlement.
The current research programme focuses on the city and its architectural form. Investigations into the functional quality of its buildings focus on their representative dimension in the endowment of political power, social difference and cultural identity. Individual rooms or sequences of rooms are questioned not only in terms of their concrete construction but also in terms of their effect, their use and their use in daily interaction by the users and their perception. In the end, 3D visualisations are created for illustration.
The Terrace Sanctuary, the Baths, the Forum and the Double-Storey Hall on the Forum Street at the foot of the city hill are of particular interest. Since a gallery with statues of emperors (Vespasian and his sons) stood in front of the Double-Storey Hall, a public function may be postulated for the building. It may have housed the tablets of the municipal law, the length of which fits well against its rear wall. The reconstruction of the electoral process on the Forum was achieved, and that of its use in the Baths.
The Terrace Sanctuary represents a type of building that was dominant in Latium at the turn of the 1st century BC. From the buildings there, namely from the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste and from the Temple of Hercules Victor in Tibur, the Terrace Sanctuary in Munigua took over its individual building forms as set pieces, so to speak. However, the architect has put them together so convincingly in a new way that the idea of an architectural pastiche does not arise. The term does not go far enough, because the reference to older buildings, which can certainly be interpreted programmatically, encouraged the local architects in Munigua not to copy, but to build something new in the same style, i.e. using the components mentioned. Hercules Augustus or Fortuna Crescens Augusta come into question for being venerated in a synnaos as the cult ruler or cult mistress of the building, which initially had a central access to the exedra with the altar. Later, the access was closed. Thus, the way through the sanctuary for the worshippers was decisively changed by this structural measure. Under certain circumstances, the reason can be sought in a change in the cult behaviour. Perhaps this existing cult was changed at a later time by the addition of another deity. This can only have been the deified emperor himself.