The excavation of a well in ancient Iesso will make it possible to set up a "food horizon" of what the ancient inhabitants of Guissona ate and cultivated during Roman times. The archaeologists participating in the 17th edition of the archaeological course have been surprised that the well was used after the house was abandoned, therefore they have found materials from the late period, located in the 5th century AD.
David Castellana, director of the Guissona Museum, points out that the Iesso wells are "differential" because they have never dried up and the material they contain has been preserved in mud. The thirteenth of the participating students has also excavated in a building to the north of the hot springs and in a corner between streets where there is a lead pipe.
The 17th edition of the Guissona archaeological course has been held for the last two weeks and ends this Friday. The director of the museum, David Castellana, has highlighted that the campaign has been very interesting in different ways. In the first place, in terms of the building located in the northern area of the hot springs, a new sector has been opened that in a certain way has changed "the horizon" of the material that has been coming out of the deposit in recent years and this will probably end. occurring in a new context of the urban distribution of Iesso.
The archaeologists think that the building would not be directly linked to the baths, therefore, it would be some other type of equipment, which could pass for a home or an establishment open to the public. Various materials have been found such as coins, bronze buckles or marble fragments. According to Castellana, all this could be placed around the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.
Regarding the excavation around a thistle located in a corner that borders the museum building, very interesting pavements have been found at circulation level and an excavation from a few years ago has also been recovered, when a pipe of lead.
The well of the manor house was finished excavating on Wednesday July 12 and it has managed to go down to seven meters deep. The archaeologists expected to find materials corresponding to the time the house was abandoned, but they have discovered that the well had a continuity of use or perhaps it was reused in a late period, for which reason materials and references have been found that take them back to the 5th century AD. . This completes the results of the excavations in other wells that had been carried out in previous editions and makes it possible to establish a "food horizon" of the Romans of Guissona throughout all of antiquity.
Castellana points out that the wells are very important at an archaeological level and in Guissona one of the differential facts is that they have never dried up because the aquifer has remained active. So, the material thrown by the inhabitants of the time has been preserved in mud for 2,000 years and therefore the organic matter that in another archaeological context would have disappeared has remained here. Remains ranging from fruit seeds to shells, pollen and other elements of food, as well as wood and some pending element that could be part of the clothing, have been extracted from the well.
The person in charge of the Iesso project and director of part of the excavations, Núria Romaní, has highlighted that the course combines the training part and teaching with students who are studying archeology or similar degrees and allows them to apply everything they learn theoretically during the degree on field. The archeology part is also combined with more theoretical training to get to know what the Romans of the territory were like.
Most of the 13 participating students are from Catalonia, from the UAB, but there are also some from Navarra and Castilla la Mancha. Likewise, there is also a student from Thessaloniki (Greece) doing a PhD focused on wells, apart from the faculty of the research group.
Romero points out that the Guissona park is really "exceptional" because it is an inland Roman city and there are few of them, and it can also be visited. The museum carries out important dissemination work and allows the public to share the research carried out by archaeologists in order to understand a little about the past of Guissona and Catalonia in general.
