During the Aurignacian and Gravetian, the morphology of hunting lithic points is conditioned by the use of abrupt retouch. However, in the Solutrian, the hunting tools change radically and for about 5,000 years the systematic use of flat, invasive and bifacial retouch will characterise the different projectile points.
The appearance of flat retouched points in the Lower and Middle Solutrian could be explained by the generalised use of the propellant. The appearance of points with different modifications to facilitate their insertion in the Upper Solutrian would be related to the appearance of the bow as a new propulsion system for these projectiles.
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Goldsmithing during the Iron Age is one of the most characteristic manifestations of the pre-Roman peoples who inhabited the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. however, its study and dating have been hampered by the lack of archaeological contexts.
Recent discoveries of several craftsmen’s workshops in the context of fortified settlements and the identification of gold mines exploited prior to the Roman conquest, not only by panning, as was assumed, but by complex gallery mining, have greatly modified our knowledge of precious metal mining and metallurgy during the Iron Age. The conference aims to report on the fortified settlements that have provided data on the manipulation and transformation of these metals, as well as the archaeological records that support their synchrony with the mining operations. These are expressive testimonies of metallurgical activity in a territory with abundant and rich metal deposits and a mining tradition dating back to the Chalcolithic period. Their study opens up new perspectives for research into the provenance of the raw materials used (including their isotopic characterisation), the dating of castreño goldsmiths’ work and the role played in the establishment of large-scale gold mining after the Roman conquest.
International Museum Day. Museums for equality: diversity and inclusion.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and, endowed with reason and conscience, should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948)
Human beings are equal but also very diverse: different backgrounds, ethnicity, gender, language, beliefs, culture… It seems that this diversity has often separated and set us against each other instead of being a source of richness and mutual understanding.
The pieces in the Museum are an expression of different eras and cultures. We invite you to discover in these videos some aspects related to diversity in some of them. History can thus be a starting point for reflecting on these same issues in our present.
Round table. Aware of the need to vindicate the role of women as active agents in history, the Feminist Research Institute of the UCM, in collaboration with the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, presents a Gender Itinerary on women in Ancient Greece, which deals with the construction of female identity, their spaces, gestures and tasks and the models of behaviour assigned to them. This reading is part of the project External link, opens in new windowItineraries for WomenExternal link, opens in new window External link promoted by the MECD and the Institute for Feminist Research to recover the memory of women in museums.
The Tresminas mining area is one of the most spectacular cultural landscapes in northwest Hispania. About 2000 years ago, a detachment of one of the powerful Roman legions settled in the Serra da Pradela to organise and control the large-scale gold mining of Tresminas and Jales (Vila Pouca de Aguiar, Vila Real, Portugal).
The spectacular traces of this exploitation can still be seen at Tresminas: two large mining cuttings (Covas and Ribeirinha) and a smaller one (Lagoinhos), as well as deep galleries dug mainly to allow the treatment and evacuation of all the extracted rock and an extensive network of water supply channels for the mines, which start in dams and end in storage reservoirs.
Galeria dos Alargamentos
There are also enormous dumps that fill the valleys and one of the most characteristic elements of this mining area: a large number of granite pestle and mortar mills used in the final grinding of the ore.
But there also remain important testimonies of the men and women who lived and worked in Tresminas, and who died there in the first two centuries of our Era. As a result of the activity carried out there for more than 200 years, these gold mines have become one of the most important in the entire Roman Empire. Today, the gold mining territory of Tresminas, being the most complex and best preserved and extending over several kilometres, is the most important in Roman Portugal.
On the occasion of the publication of the book Corrupta Roma, by Dr. Pedro Ángel Fernández-Vega, the Museum is organising a round table discussion that will offer a portrait of corruption in ancient Rome and the mechanisms that dealt with it. Bribes, influence peddling, misappropriation, electoral scuffles between political factions, elections won with votes bought in the circus, trials of dubious impartiality… Woven into networks of patronage that linked business groups with the political class, corruption emerged in the form of scandals, as it became endemic in the system. “Those who steal from a private individual spend their lives between handcuffs and shackles; those who steal from the state, between gold and purple” (Marcus Porcius Cato).
did you know that Roman women did not have their own names like men, and that all the sisters of the same family were called the same, just by their surname? Or that they were incorporated into the labour market in traditionally “male” professions such as blacksmiths, bricklayers or shipwrights? Coinciding with the premiere on Movistar+ of the series El corazón del Imperio, created by Santiago Posteguillo and starring Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, we invite you to attend this round table discussion on the history of women in Rome with the participation of Patricia González Gutiérrez, author of the book Soror. Women in Rome, Israel del Santo, director of The Heart of the Empire, Sandra Escacena, actress of The Heart of the Empire and the journalist and author Elisa McCausland.
Violence against women is a social scourge of such magnitude that for decades numerous social movements, legislative advances and public policies have been developed to eradicate it. Although the abuse is committed in the home, it is necessary to visualise the role of women in history, to reflect the leading role they played in antiquity, “and to fill in the blank of the paper of the books that have always told the other side”. The history of Roman women has always been told by men, who labelled women’s behaviour in accordance with patriarchal customs as fury.
Bacchanals, a term with unmistakable resonances, a historical cliché with a solid foundation, but is it plausible? Nothing so Roman in the collective imagination as degenerate emperors and unbridled orgies… and yet bacchanals were rituals, ceremonies of worship to Bacchus, a god of salvation, offering hope of life after death.
So what was the truth behind the great Bacchanalia scandal? In 186 BC the Senate of Rome and the consuls launched a persecution against the followers of Bacchus, which became the first witch-hunt in the West. The unquestionable fact presents more shadows than light: did the Roman matrons lose their precious virtue by indulging in sex? Did the Roman adolescents immolate their virility in honour of Dionysus? Or was there fear in Rome of a pagan sect of mystical rites that would jeopardise the social foundations of the nascent Empire? Did the Bacchantes really hatch a conspiracy?
Around the turn of the Age, the legions of the Emperor Augustus decided to convert the enclave known in medieval documents as Los Bañales into an important Roman city, equipped with all the facilities of a city of Rome, probably in an attempt to make the new Roman way of life attractive to the populations located between the colony of Caesar Augusta (Zaragoza) and the ancient Pompelo (Pamplona). The work that has been carried out on the site for the last ten years has shown how intensely the city took off between 12 BC and 96 AD, but it has also highlighted the weakness of many of these communities, which ended their days as fields of ruins just into the 3rd century AD.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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