Dave, the Editor, showed me a facebook link on a archaeological find in Velilla, but we were both surprised to see that it was dated in 2013, so I looked into it.
Well, there was a find in that part of Almuñécar recently – certainly more recently than 2013!
The find was on the Monte Velilla near the Cuesta de Godoy. Almuñécar archeaologist, Iván Sánchez Marcos, and university professor at Granada, Andrés Adroher Aroux, had been working for some months on the theory that the town harboured a third Pheonician necropolis, besides the ones in San Cristóbal and Puente de Noy.
Together with another municipal archeaologist, Elena Navas, they uncovered the grave of a couple, containing, besides their remains, a burial urn and a ceramic amphora in an amazing state of conservation.
These digs were thanks to a request submitted by a team headed by Sánchez, who had requested from the relevant authorities in Granada, permission to nose around Monte Velilla and also acquired a BIC rating for the town’s necropolises; a BIC is a Heritage of Cultural Interest category.
The Laurita, which is the name for the San Cristóbal one, remains unexplored owing to a refusal on the part of the landowner where it lies, but the team did get the green light for Monte Velilla.
The first step was the mapping out of the terrain to be explored and then a shallow test-dig over promising areas within it, after using a ground-radar survey. Then came the exploration leading to the uncovering of the graves.
Almuñécar’s archeaological history starts around 1,500 BC with presence of the Bronze-Age Argaric culture. Then, around the 9th Century BC the Pheonicians arrived and set up the settlement of EX. By the time that the Romans arrived – as they invariably did – in the 3rd Century BC, there was a a well structured town in place with a thriving economy based on fish-salting – it even had its own coinage.
The Romans; not ones to sit around and twiddle their thumbs, set about building temples, aqueducts and before long Sexi Firmum Lulium was the place to be for BC tourists.
Then the Christians started playing up in the north and before you could say, “Watch out; you’ll have somebody’s
Then came the Arabs establishing Al Andalus and their travel writer, Al-Idrisi, knocked up a Costa Tropical, tourist guide, mentioning abandoned temples and the lingering smell of fish paste (garum; A Roman gastronimic Chernobyl sauce)
By the 9th century AD Almuñécar had forgotten about fish paste and was concentrating on sugar cane, bananas, raisins, cereals and personal hygiene. It had a port, a market and a pretty big mosque.
eye out with that,” Baza had fallen to the Great Unwashed in 1489 and the Costa Tropical was swarming with annoying people from Madrid… not much has changed in that respect.
Oh, ah, yes, the find! They found intact pottery and the remains of a married couple who looked like they had been bickering for a dozen-odd centuries – they certainly weren’t talking to each other when they dug them up, that’s for sure.
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)