The leafy olive olive olive relieves the dry heat of the Sierra de Cádiz and proclaims the collection that is approaching. In its shadow and in a steep slope of loose earth that complicates stability, archaeologist Mar Castro looks out to the newly unearthed decantation well. It is the last found found that confirms a concatenation of suspicions and hypotheses called to reorder the story of Zahara de la Sierra, a white village in the Sierra de Cádiz that has so far proudly exhibited its medieval past. But that cylindrical structure confirms that the town had a Roman aqueduct of at least two kilometers that saved a height of 544 meters. And, in turn, that water infrastructure signed up for the idea that Zahara had a past as a Roman city, named Ignoto for now, with sufficient power to order such civil works.
“We have corroborated that it was a Roman city with an entity to manage that infrastructure,” confirms archaeologist Luis Cobos, a collaborator in the investigation, along with his partner Esperanza Mata. The professional has been following the bread crumbs for years, in the form of archaeological findings, which spoke of a little documented Roman past in the town of Serrano, a postal village of 1,300 inhabitants articulated around a hill crowned by a medieval fortress. It was the case of candelabrum – A unique extensible piece in the Peninsula linked to a place of worship – that Cobos and Mata found in 2020. Also of a Roman cistern located by Cobos in 2023, which until now was believed designed for rainwater; or the remains of square ashlars on the road to the medieval village, which fit with walls of wall or support.
But the definitive evidence that fit the Roman puzzle of Zahara was missing. And that has arrived with the excavation campaign carried out during the first week of September led by Mar Castro, researcher at the Department of Prehistory of the University of Granada. Oriented by ancient research texts that spoke of the possibility that there was an aqueduct in the area and of the guidelines discovered by Cobos of their three decades of studies in the town, Castro and his team have made tastings in the surroundings of the town that have confirmed the existence of a water infrastructure possibly carried out around the 1st century, in a high -imperial time.
The team of archaeologists has discovered dispersed remains in the territory that seem to point to the aqueduct from the spring of Altabacar, located 545 meters high, and traveled a distance of two kilometers, in which he had to save an important vagua until he raised the water at 544 meters high, where Cobos already had localized remains of a Roman water infrastructure of the medieval town. “To save that trough there I should have a siphon to apply the law of communicating vessels or pass about arcades,” Razon Castro reasons. Although for now no remains have been located that clear that doubt, yes that vestiges have been found on the outskirts of the aqueduct route and a decantation well, located in an olive grove today private and closed to the step.
The presence of an aqueduct implies that in the area there was a rural city with sufficient weight and inhabitants to have resources to build that infrastructure. “It corroborates that it should be a city because there had to be a magistracy that commissioned and maintained it. It should be a city with an entity, although not classical,” says Castro. The researchers do not know how long it was in use, although it is taken for granted that it was no longer active in the medieval and Muslim era of Zahara, the best known of the town for the importance it charged in this period and for the Christian conquest of the enclave in 1483 by Rodrigo Ponce de León, first Duke of Cádiz.
As is usually the case with archaeological findings, the resolution of an unknown gives way to another. Once shown that Zahara had a Roman past as a city, the doubt is what his name was. “In the 18th century, it was identified with Lastigi, based on Plinio texts. However, this city corresponds to another site in the province of Seville,” explains Cobos, intrigued by the new research challenge that opens now. It is also yet to be resolved in which exact area of the hill the city was located and what cisterns came to supply, since there are some located under the level of infrastructure and others above, that it is interpreted that they could only be rainfall. “It is a complex settlement because walls have been used for subsequent occupations,” adds Cobos.
Castro and his team – integrated by researchers from the University of Granada, Jaén and the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain – culminated on September 5 their field work. Now they have the analysis of the vast compiled material, which includes photographic ones with drone flights and concretion analytics – solidified rests – taken from the aqueduct and dates by thermoluminescence. The objective is to “seek parallels in measures” with other similar hydraulic works of Roman Hispania and advance in the knowledge of the use and importance that this type of infrastructure had in the rural areas of Bética.
“We verify that knowledge was also implemented in minor settlements. Technical expertise is intrinsic in the Roman world,” says Castro. In fact, his research in Zahara is part of the project HydroRemotefunded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and that seeks to analyze what the water management of Roman cities in height was. The study includes, in addition to the Zahareña town to the occurrence of occurrence (in Ubrique, also in Cádiz), that of Morana’s slopes (in Lucena, Córdoba) and the municipality of Martos (Jaén). “In all of them to get the water supply was a real challenge,” Castro ditch.