The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

The Roman city Flavia Sabora emerges from a cereal field in Malaga

2022-10-04T10:44:50.182Z


Scientists from the University of Cádiz locate the lost municipality thanks to the georadar that has documented traces of streets, some thermal baths and other buildings


Caius Cornelius Severus and Marcus Septimius Severus crossed the more than 2,300 kilometers that go from the current province of Malaga to Rome to meet with the Emperor Vespasian.

They arrived in August of the year 77 and, just three days later, they got a hearing to make two requests.

The one who was one of the most powerful men of the moment accepted his request to move his village, Sabora, to another more fertile land nearby and denied them to collect their own taxes.

In exchange, the new city was to be renamed Flavia Sabora, in honor of his dynastic house.

Today we know the ins and outs of that meeting because it ended up engraved in a bronze that resisted until the 18th century.

The new city had a worse fate, lost in the mists of time.

Until now, when it has finally appeared under a cereal field in Cañete La Real,

Scientists from the Geodetection Unit of the University of Cádiz (UCA) have managed to locate the layout of apparent streets, public spaces and even a thermal or nymphal space in El Carrascal, a rustic area of ​​crops on the outskirts of Cañete.

Through the use of drone flights, georadar passes and data processing with software —known as non-invasive archaeology— they have managed to scan the subsoil in an area of ​​more than two hectares in which the entire layout of a possible city appears. .

“It is a lot for a villa and little for the concept of a great classical Roman city.

It fits more with the concept of

small town

, a civic, religious and administrative center that served a larger rural area”, explains the professor of Ancient History and head of the Unit, Lázaro Lagóstena, who has specialized for decades in the study of the landscape and rural areas of the past.

Lagóstena's team has been able to document on a hillside between two plots the remains of streets organized in the classic Roman cardo-decumano arrangement, areas of insulae with possible remains of pavements —"they are probably mosaics", the expert points out—, a apse typical of a thermal space and even remains of four niches that could fit the typology of a nymphaeum, a place of worship linked to water.

To the professor, all those lines that the georadar traces fit directly with the plan of "an administrative center of the Flavian era", a period that includes 69 to 96 after Christ.

And that is where one of the greatest values ​​of the discovery lies: "It is a city built in a single phase, so it is ideal for studying the urban planning of that period."

The georadar of the Geodetection Unit of the University of Cádiz in El Carrascal, the cultivation field of Cañete La Real (Málaga) in which the Roman city of Flavia Sabora has appeared. EL PAÍS

The UCA team - already known for its findings in Hasta Regia (Jerez) or in the Punic port of Doña Blanca (El Puerto de Santa María) - landed thanks to the chance discovery two years ago of Antonio Aranda, a researcher and resident of Cañete La Real.

"Looking at some satellite images, he saw that the floors of some buildings were drawn," summarizes Andrés Morón, deputy mayor and councilor for Historical Heritage of the town.

The discovery came to clear one of the great historical debates in the area, determined to find the missing site of the Roman city with different hypotheses.

"El Carrascal is a totally different location than what was believed," Morón abounds enthusiastically.

Although Flavia Sabora's location was an enigma, her story was not.

The Latin author Pliny (

Naturalis Historia

) defined it in the 1st century as an

oppidum

(or hill settlement).

"That is to say, a population of pre-Roman origin, subject to the control and payment of taxes to Rome", as pointed out by the Geodetection Unit of the UCA in its report of the finding sent to the Ministry of Culture.

The first population center was on the hill of Sabora, located next to the current town of 1,600 inhabitants, but "it is very cold there and there is a shortage of water," argues Morón.

With the security that the Romans brought after their conquest, in the equation of protection and prosperity, he prevailed the second variable, as demonstrated by the request of the two municipal representatives to the emperor.

Recreation of the main traces of the buildings detected with the georadar in Cañete La Real (Málaga) and that the UCA researchers believe are from the lost Roman city of Flavia Sabora. EL PAÍS

Vespasian's favorable decision ended up written in bronze —a classic material in Roman legal epigraphy— to be exhibited in some visible place in the new city.

And there it should have remained, despite the decay of a municipality that did not resist too much in that location, pushed by the own decay of the urban centers that Betica began to experience from the middle of the 2nd century.

“Flavia Sabora's life spanned just two or three generations.

She was caught by the degradation of the cities.

The nucleus moved over time to the hill in the Islamic period and then moved to the current location of Cañete”, summarizes Lagóstena.

Engulfed by abandonment, the references to Flavia Sabora could have been diluted even more, were it not for the fact that a farmer located, between 1517 and 1551, the bronze plaque that tells the story of its refoundation.

The piece ended up in the court of Carlos V and remained there until it disappeared in the 18th century, probably engulfed by the flames in the fire of the Alcázar of Madrid in 1734. Although by the time that happened, the text was already known and it had been possible to transcribe.

The discovery of georadar finally locates the specific area from which the bronze came and opens up new research scenarios.

"The next phase would be to analyze space by space, looking for parallels in other cities of the same period," says Lagóstena.

While that phase arrives or not —conditional on its selection as a research project by the Andalusian Government—, in Cañete La Real they are determined not to lose their Roman past again.

Morón assures that he is already moving to encourage the Junta de Andalucía to initiate a file to protect the site as an Asset of Cultural Interest and thus shield the area from possible looters.

At the same time, the councilor points out the municipal intention of "wanting to buy the land from the current owners for a fair price, before the protection leaves the land with less value for them," Morón reasons.

Then, perhaps, would come the excavation and interpretation to make the place visitable.

For now, what is certain is that Flavia Sabora will not be lost again.

Subscribe to continue reading

read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-10-04

You may like

News/Politics 2024-03-23T05:06:11.530Z
News/Politics 2024-01-30T10:10:10.211Z
News/Politics 2024-02-12T05:15:10.292Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.