Recherche par auteur > Javier Andreu

In recent years, archaeological excavations in the Roman city of Los Bañales de Uncastillo
(Zaragoza, Spain) have revealed traces of the urban planning of the northern quarter of this urban
center in the interior of the Tarraconensis province, in the district managed from the colony
Caesar Augusta (Zaragoza), maybe the city mentioned as Tarraca in ancient sources. In the
context of the Augustan pacification and the effects of the Emperor's third trip to the Iberian
peninsula, the town decided to emulate the new Roman model of city initiating the construction
of its forum and also the urbanization of the foot of the place where the pre-Roman castro had
been located.
In the configuration of that urban street plan, Vitruvian recommendations were followed for both
the two excavated decumani and for one of the cardines, the easternmost one. This reveals this
space as an attractive urban space to learn about the process of implementation of Roman urban
planning in a native town, However, this town would know a great take-off when it became a
crossing point of the route between Caesar Augusta and Beneharnum (Lescar, France) stimulated,
in addition, by the collaboration, in its opening, of the legions of the emperor Augustus between
the years 9 and 3 B.C., which coincide, precisely, with the foundation of the urban framework
that will be the object of attention.
The present communication will focus on the material contexts that have facilitated the work of
these years and that allow us to demonstrate the evolution of the aforementioned street map
between the first century B.C. and the middle of the second century A.D. as well as to carry out
a typological study of the construction technique and the details of use that make these streets a
living space of the Roman city, which, as we have shown in other publications, can also provide
information on the daily life of the place and on its municipal regime. Likewise, special attention
will be paid to the issues related to road traffic that some of the available evidence attests to, in
particular, the collection of step-stones located in the two decumani mentioned above and to those
derived from the management of urban waste, currently under study. All this from the point of
view of the characterization of the urban take-off of these small cities in the interior of the Iberian
peninsula.