The founding of Qart-Hadasht, or ‘New Carthage’, in 228/227 BC reaffirmed the Carthaginian presence on the Iberian Peninsula. The city would serve as its main political base and military port in the ...Western Mediterranean before being lost to Rome in the Second Punic War. Although the conquest was led on the ground by the Barcid family, the town’s flourishing also led to an increase in the metropolis’s economic and commercial activities. In this study, a total of 37 amphorae of Central Mediterranean typology and located in different Punic contexts of the town were analysed using X-ray fluorescence (XRF), thermogravimetry (TG), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and thin-section petrography (OM). The analyses reveal that a significant number of them originated in North Africa, mainly in the area of Tunisia, though some originated from other production centres on the island of Sicily and probably Algeria. The results also confirm the existence of shared amphora types produced in different Punic production areas and workshops. Thus, the central argument here is that the arrival of containers from such diverse provenances allows us to identify the economic opportunity that this foundation represented for the metropolis as a whole and to explore how this new trade relationship was structured.
This study analyses nautical harbour activities and their spatial distribution using a high-resolution method of wind-wave hindcasting, in order to identify the location of safe and sheltered ...anchorage areas. We apply this methodological approach to evaluate the ancient harbour of Carthago Nova from the Punic period to the Late Roman period (third century BC–fourth century AD). Literary sources have defined Carthago Nova (Cartagena, Spain) as the only natural harbour of
Hispania
and one of the best in the Mediterranean, with Escombreras Island as the main natural feature that protects the harbour. Due to the scarcity of archaeological evidence and the transformation the harbour has undergone over time, this study has been considered necessary and carried out in order to supersede the current general and anachronic observations of wind-wave effects. Through an interdisciplinary approach, we analyse one of the main factors that determines the safe anchorage of ships: coastal wind waves. The modelling and simulation of waves have been applied using the SWAN model, paleo-topographic reconstruction, and maritime archaeological data. By means of GIS spatial analysis, an Anchorage Safety Index has been established that computes data from paleo-bathymetry, wind, and simulated wave height. This high-resolution analysis allows us to assess in detail the impact of coastal and island topography on nautical activities inside ancient harbours.
En este trabajo se analiza un conjunto de 61 placas arquitectónicas y 9 antefijas procedentes del santuario de La Encarnación (Caravaca. Murcia). Las placas presentan decoración en un doble registro ...con palmetas circunscritas en la parte superior y un doble friso de palmetas de siete pétalos alternando con flores de loto, opuesto por su base, y separado por una fila de espirales en horizontal. Las antefijas reproducen los bustos de sátiros y ménades. Se trata de un material importado que tiene en la Península Itálica sus paralelos más inmediatos. Se fechan en el siglo 11 a. C. y documentan un proceso de monumentalización precoz de un viejo santuario ibérico, impulsado seguramente por la propia Roma.
En este trabajo se analizan tres inscripciones conmemorativas halladas en el teatro romano de Canagena en 1990. Dos de ellas se inscriben sobre sendas arae de mármol blanco. mientras que la tercera ...corresponde a un gran dintel horizontal. Representan una exaltación a la figura de Gaius Caesar. posible patrono de la ciudad.
Se analiza un conjunto de estructuras halladas en el sector nororicntal del cerro del Molinete (Cartagena). Consisten en un edículo pavimentado con opus signinum en el que se halla inscrita una ...dedicación a Atargatis asociado a una serie de cubetas e instalaciones de carácter hídrico. Al lado, restos de un gran basamento que podrían constituir el podium de un templo. La cronología de finales del siglo II a.C. indica la penetración directa de estos cultos desde oriente y su trasmisión a través de los esclavos y libertos sirios, bien documentados en la epigrafía de la ciudad.
Este trabajo presenta los resultados del análisis arqueofaunístico del material óseo del barrio portuario de época bizantina superpuesto al teatro romano de Carthago Spartaria (Cartagena, Murcia). ...Sobre una amplia muestra de 2.723 piezas, procedentes de pozos de desecho y basureros, se determinan las estrategias productivas y los patrones de consumo de la cabaña ganadera de una fase histórica de la ciudad cuya fisonomía ya nada tiene que ver con la imagen monumental de la urbe romana. Se ha determinado el uso de una ganadería mixta, con un predominio de ovicaprinos y bovinos frente a una escasa presencia de suidos y équidos, así como de fauna cinegética. La mayoría de los animales, a excepción de las cabras y los cerdos, así como ciertos bovinos, fueron sacrificados en edad plenamente adulta, lo que implica que se aprovecharon tanto sus productos secundarios como su fuerza tractora. La ganadería se confirma como una importante actividad económica, en un momento en que la explotación agrícola del entorno sufre una considerable reducción a juzgar por la desaparición de la mayor parte de los establecimientos rurales de las décadas precedentes. La cabaña representada y las condiciones de cría y mantenimiento contribuyen a proporcionar una imagen "ruralizada" de la vieja capital hispana.
This work presents the results from the analysis of the bone material from the Byzantine harbor quarter overlapping the Roman theater of Carthago Spartaria (Cartagena, Murcia). From a broad sample of ...2,723 fragments from debris pits and garbage dumps, the production strategies and the consuming patterns of the livestock are established during a historical period of the city in which its appearance has nothing to do with the monumental image of a Roman town. The use of mixed farming is established, with a predominance of caprine and bovine versus a scant presence of suids and equines, as well as wild hunted fauna. Most of the animals, with the exception of goats and pigs, as well as certain bovines, were sacrificed in full adulthood. This implies that both their secondary products and their draft force were used. Livestock managing is confirmed as an important economic activity, at a moment when agricultural exploitation of the environment undergoes substantial diminishing as judged from the disappearance of the vast majority of rural sites from preceding decades. The represented livestock and the herding and maintenance conditions contribute to provide a “rural-like” image of the old Hispanic capital.
The configuration of the urban sites has been setting of social, economic and ideological processes through the time, pertaining to the population entities willing to settle in the occupied site. The ...administrative planning of urban sectors involved in public or private uses was materialized in the necessary enablement of private or residential areas and public craft or industrial commercial and burial areas. The site of Carthago Nova was not exempt from this in its preRoman and Roman occupations. Its political and temporal progression showed a series of transformations of the urban fabric that were not unconnected to the topographic constraints of the primal physical environment and holocenic ecological contingencies. Bringing out the conjunction of this singular palaeotopography, which has a geomorphological dynamic and a geotectonic origin, with the evidence of significant transformations in Augustan period, is the focus of this work, in which data are shown from an ongoing research.