In 2019, a very severe drought reduced the level of Extremadura reservoirs to levels rarely known. The volume of water accumulated in the Valdecañas (El Gordo, Cáceres) did not exceed 20%. Thus, enormous areas of cracked earth were exposed in this swamp whose construction in 1957 flooded unique archaeological sites, including the Roman city of Augustobriga. The national and regional administrations, faced with the spectacular decline in waters, began a frantic race between 2019 and 2023 to rescue and study all the historical material that was being revealed before looters looted it or the dammed levels increased. They did it: unique pieces of archeology were rescued in time. Valdecañas is currently at 93% of its capacity.
The Nature Protection Service of the Civil Guard (Seprona) played a fundamental role in the Operation Valdecañas to stop the continuous archaeological looting that was taking place. Now, the Ministry of Culture and Sports has reconstructed what happened during those four years of piecework in the report The management of archaeological heritage in continental waters in the face of climate change: the Valdecañas reservoir (Cáceres, 2019-2023). A megalithic dolmen, the complete cartography of Augustobriga, the recovery of three veton boars, Chalcolithic burials, Roman altars or coins and medieval board games have thus been saved from predation.
Experts from the main Spanish archaeological institutions (General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Fine Arts, the General Subdirectorate of Management and Coordination of Cultural Assets, the General Subdirectorate of the Cultural Heritage Institute of Spain, the National Archaeological Museum, the National Museum of Roman Art, the Altamira Museum and the National Museum of Underwater Archeology) were alerted in 2019 “to rescue everything that the reservoir was going to reveal,” the report states. The archaeologists knew that the swamp environment “witnessed multiple cultures from the Paleolithic to the medieval period, which gave rise to an archaeological record of enormous richness.” As a consequence of the drought, they recall, “a management strategy for the emerged archaeological heritage was initiated with the aim of documenting, preserving and enhancing it.”
In September 2019, the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain (IPCE) received the first information about the emergence of the Guadalperal dolmen, an important megalithic complex dated between the 5th and 3rd millennium BC. C. The displaced technicians found themselves in front of a structure composed of more than 140 granite slabs that form a corridor-type dolmen with a funerary chamber five meters in diameter, a corridor almost 10 meters long and 1.50 meters wide. The structure was flanked by a circular ring formed by quartzite bowls. It was studied and analyzed with new technologies, as well as consolidated in the same place to avoid damage when the waters rose again.
“As a consequence of the plundering that was being observed in various areas of the reservoir basin,” the specialists point out, “it was also decided to carry out a series of archaeological interventions. [en torno al dolmen] with the aim of documenting and geolocating other nearby sites. This was the case of what is known as Valle Santo. In August 2021, 18 stratigraphic units were identified there and more than one hundred archaeological objects were collected, which made it possible to date a possible Roman rural settlement specialized in the production of oil.”
In the walls of the late medieval convent of Alarza, which also emerged as a result of the receding water, a coin minted during the reign of Alfonso In another nearby area, El Roncadero, two decorated Roman steles and an alquerque, a very popular board game in Europe between the 12th and 15th centuries, were also located. They were deposited in the Museum of Cáceres, where they are part of its permanent collection. In the same area, “they were georeferenced [también] several megaliths”, the study of which has not yet been completed.
In 2021, archaeologists dedicated themselves to a detailed analysis of the urban planning of the city of Augustobriga (Talavera la Vieja, Cáceres), through intensive archaeological prospecting and carrying out 3D photogrammetry with drones. “These actions allowed the creation of a detailed plan of the urban layout of the ancient Roman city, and the registration of hitherto unpublished heritage elements, such as an ashlar with a fascinum [falo divino] carved on an ashlar located in the hot springs,” they remember.
Archaeological interventions in Augustobriga, between 2021 and 2022, confirmed that the city extended about 22 hectares, was walled and had a forum and public baths in its northern part. The urban layout was organized around a large northeast-southeast road (decumanus) and another northwest-southeast road (cardines). He municipality “It also enjoyed an aqueduct, sewers and large areas with housing structures.” Outside the walls were the burial areas and other construction structures linked to daily life.
The investigation also made it possible to rescue a Latin funerary epigraph on one of the walls of the Santos Mártires church, also exposed by the drought. The inscription, although very eroded, has been able to be translated: “Marcus Villius, son of Marcus, of the Papiria tribe, Emeritan, here lies.”
For its part, in the Alija castle, on the banks of the swamp, two veton boars were found. About two kilometers away from him, in the municipality of El Gordo, another pre-Roman sculpture was located, this time a pair of boars, one of them a female, with a length of 122 centimeters, a width of 65 and 670 centimeters. kilograms of weight. “This is the first documented boar sculpture in which a female specimen appears,” say the archaeologists.
The specialists also found a nearby grave of flagstones “that was partially disturbed as a result of looting. In it, numerous human bone remains could be seen with the naked eye, corresponding to an adult individual. One of the circular imprints seemed to be also altered as a result of illicit archaeological activity, with the stratum of its interior clearly disturbed, perhaps as a result of the attempt to search for a cremation grave and its alleged deposit.
Isaac Sastre de Diego, general director of Heritage, Culture and Fine Arts, summarizes the rescue operation with these words: “It was a doubly enriching process. On the one hand, the intrinsic value of a joint strategy to safeguard a heritage that had been kept under water. On the other hand, the reading left by four years of collaboration between this direction and the entire group of agents, institutions and actors from various administrations, united under the objective of preserving in the best possible conditions an archaeological heritage that belongs to everyone.” Almost all the material was transferred to the Cáceres Museum, where its managers currently proudly display it, not in an auction room in any country in the world.
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