0. What is Europe? The European Spaces in the history of Europe.

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Madrid 7000 years ago. Casa Montero and the oldest flint mining site in the Western Mediterranean

The ancient Neolithic flint mines of Casa Montero were discovered in the summer of 2003, when archaeological work was being carried out prior to the construction of the Madrid M-50 ring road. A project financed by the 1% Cultural Fund has maintained the research for more than 6 years. The interdisciplinary team made up of more than 59 researchers from 19 institutions and 13 companies has dedicated its efforts to protect, study and publicise the traces left by the communities that came to this enclave to extract flint from the interior of the earth more than 7000 years ago. In this conference we will tell you when, how, who and why they did it.

December 1, 2022

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Global climate change and local responses: the case of the Pleistocene to Holocene transition on the Cantabrian coast

The research addresses the analysis of the local responses of Cantabrian hunter-gatherer societies to the environmental transformations of various orders that characterised the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods.
These transformations ranged from the continuous rise in sea levels and the parallel reduction of habitable territory to the drastic modification of the vegetation cover, as well as changes in the terrestrial and marine faunas. Alongside this, the migratory movements of other human groups affected by these changes are also shown to be a source of novelty in these social responses that we see at the local scale.

December 1, 2022


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Capital and labour in the Roman world: the example of the mines

Cycle “Dialogues with the classical world”, September 6 to December 20, 2017.

December 1, 2022

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The gold of Tresminas (Cultural landscape and Roman mining technology)

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.

December 1, 2022

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Sisapo, capital of ancient cinnabar

The town of Sisapo, identified with the site of La Bienvenida (Ciudad Real), is part of a systematic research project that has been underway for more than three decades.
In addition to its intrinsic interest as a thriving centre since its foundation at the end of the Late Bronze Age, it is also a mining capital that managed the cinnabar and silver resources of the rich northern regions of Sierra Morena in Roman times.

December 1, 2022

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The Roman and Late Antique mining and metallurgical centre of the Cerro de los Almadenes (Otero de Herreros, Segovia)

The mining-metallurgical centre of Cerro de los Almadenes is located southwest of the village of Otero de Herreros and since 2009 several members of the Spanish Society for the History of Archaeology (SEHA) have been excavating at this site.
The archaeological work has located copper mines and a battery of ore reduction furnaces of a type hitherto unknown on the peninsula. The excavations have documented structures and materials dating mainly from the Late Republican, High-Imperial and Late Antique periods, although there are also remains from the 6th century BC. Monetary finds and the sculpture of a seated lady with her head removed also stand out.

December 1, 2022

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Roman nurseries and Villae Maritimae in Hispania

In this conference we will deal with a series of Roman constructions that until now have not been analysed with the attention they deserve and therefore have not been well interpreted. The most recognisable remains of these, excavated in the coastal rock, can be found in the northern half of the Alicante coast in the towns of Jávea, Calpe, El Campello and Alicante (the latter next to the Roman city of Lucentum). A new installation of this type has also recently been proposed at Cape Trafalgar (Cádiz), although with less obvious remains than those in Alicante.
Numerous nurseries are scattered along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and there is very little evidence of both types of constructions in the same place. In reality, most of the nurseries were part of sumptuous maritime villas, an element that made them stand out as an expression of maximum luxury and ostentation.
The scarcity and uniqueness of these Roman constructions on the Iberian Peninsula, even with their remarkable monumentality and almost all of them grouped together in a very specific stretch of the Spanish Mediterranean coast, are strong arguments for proposing measures for their conservation. In recent years we have witnessed the partial destruction of some nurseries in El Campello due to marine erosion and others, for the same reason, are in danger of disappearing.

December 1, 2022

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The great Corduba-Emerita road, the territory and the exploitation of the gold-bearing heart of the conventus Cordubensis

Through various national and regional research projects, the “Ager Mellariensis” team of the University of Cordoba (www.uco.es/mellaria) has documented several kilometres of the great connecting artery between Cordoba and Merida as it passes through the territory of Cordoba and Mellaria.
This road was the evacuation channel for the wealth of the famed gold-producing land of Córdoba. Thus, a series of major and minor settlements and production complexes were set up around its course. We begin to glimpse the structure that allowed the financial power of the capital of Baetica in the powerful mining district of which it was a reference point.

December 1, 2022

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The Roman city of Regina

The Roman city of Regina is currently located in the vicinity of the municipality of Casas de Reina, a small town near Llerena, in the south of the province of Badajoz. In ancient times it was in the province of Baetica, attached to the conventus Cordubensis.
Neither the mining wealth of the area, nor its important strategic location, an important pass towards the Vegas del Guadiana, went unnoticed by the Romans. After the first skirmishes with the indigenous tribes and, above all, with the Lusitanian bands, the Romans erected a first settlement to control the territory at Cerro de las Nieves. With the pax Augusta, as happened in other towns, the high ground was abandoned and the city was built on the plain.
A city devoted to mining, it exercised administrative control over a large territory. As a result of this prosperous activity, in the time of Vespasian, it was granted the legal status of municipium.

December 1, 2022

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