Research (2008-2013)

“Los Bañales” archeological site boasts a Roman city and a previous settlement of vasconic character of which little is known as yet. Moreover, a Late Antique settlement which would have reached up to the 9th century AD at least, was documented in the highest sector. Located on the side of the military road leading from the Ebro Valley to the Cantabrian Sea and the Pyrenees, it enjoyed its period of greatest splendor between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD, its name remaining unknown. Although it already had a monumental phase during the Roman Republican period, it enjoyed its floruit between Augustus and the Flavian dynasty. At that time it reached the rank of Roman municipality and shortly after it started a process of degradation and dismantling of public spaces towards the end of the Antonine period. Architectural spolia perfectly document this process everywhere. The most monumental urban area was probably abandoned at the end of the 3rd century AD for the benefit of rural settlements, generally villas, with magnificent funerary monuments in the valleys of the rivers Riguel and Arba de Luesia, but also for the benefit of the highest area of the town, where occupation from the 5th to the 9th century AD was documented.

Several areas of the city have been studied: the impressive water supply system –with a dam, a section of the channel of the hydraulic system raised on pillars and riui channels excavated in the rock–, several domestic areas, both of the Italic and insula types, monumental bathw–most probably built when the city reached the rank of municipality in the Flavian period– and, particularly, a large forum of which only the west sector and part of the south façade have been excavated to date.

During the last century J. Galiay Sarañana and A. Beltrán Martínez carried out archeological excavations. A high number of materials recovered during those excavations still remain unpublished. The team is currently dedicated to research, –and subsequent dissemination and enhancement– into the domestic-artisan neighborhood of tabernae close to the baths (2009 to 2012 campaigns), the public square of the Roman city –which has provided exceptional epigraphic and statutory findings (2010 campaign until today)– and the settlement in the highest sector, “El Pueyo de los Bañales” (2012 and 2013 campaigns).

(translation by Laura González Fernández)