The unknown Baeza hidden under the Cerro del Alcázar

Archaeologists Miguel Ángel Sabastro Román and Yolanda Arrebola Urdiales knew that the inhabitants of Baeza “are masters when it comes to giving new life to stone” and they were not surprised that their ancestors had “recycled” ancient walls when in 2023 they began excavating Cerro del Alcázar, a few meters from the historic center of the city of Jaén. In any archaeological intervention, they find examples of this ancient “circular economy”, which is why they were not surprised to find that Christians remodeled Almohad houses after the conquest of the city by Ferdinand III the Saint in 1227, or that the Muslim wall was based on older constructions.

However, specialists in the archeology of Nerea did not expect to find remains of more than 3,500 years of history piled up and even seemingly jumbled in probes measuring four by four meters. “Here in less than 30 centimeters you go from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages», comment Sabastro and Arrebola as they open the metal gate of the fence which protects ABC’s excavations.

A few steps away, in one of the gaps opened in this vast plain, a wide stony path appears. “We were lucky enough to find what we thought was one of the main streets within the city walls Christian erawho goes up and looks for the top of the hill where the Alcazar would be located, the noblest area”, explains Sabastro, enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by this route and by other ramifications that they discovered to know the urban planning of the original Baeza in its last phase.

According to the archaeologist, in the middle of the 16th century the population abandoned the hill and built the Renaissance Baeza next to it, today World Heritage with its neighbor Úbeda. The hill, populated for so many centuries – at least since the Chalcolithic – Sabastro points out – became inhabited only by the city’s deceased, as a municipal cemetery, before being completely abandoned. Nerea specialists have discovered several of these last tombs that sheltered the hill and in the excavated earth, human bones of the ancient Baezanos appear a few meters from the surface. history”, they emphasize.

The street from the 13th or 14th century AD leads to the remains of one of the gates of the wall which Isabella the Catholic had it demolished in 1476after the disputes between two powerful families of Baeza, the Benavides and the Carvajals. After the capture of the Alcazar by the former, the queen intervened in the confrontation and issued a royal command through which she ordered the main gates and towers of the city to be deactivated. Today the so-called Jaén Gate remains standing, as it was rebuilt in the time of Charles I with the emperor’s shield.

Arrebola approaches his car for a moment and, returning to the site, shows an aerial photograph in which we can better appreciate the base of one of the two towers that flanked this entrance to the Casas de Palacio del Alcázar. Next, the archaeologist draws attention to the two brick bins coated with lime and sand for waterproofing, which they discovered attached to the interior canvas of the wall. “Another contribution that we face at one of the doors of the primitive Alcázar of Baeza», underline the two researchers. Of this ancient fortification, only the foundations remain, due to the neglect it has suffered since the demolition order of Isabel la Católica and due to the authorization given by the municipality to the inhabitants of Baeza in the 17th century to take “the stones of the Alcazar”.

A wall on argaric walls

Next to the old demolished gate are the remains of the Almohad wall of the Alcazar. Sabastro approaches to show its width in situ and shows its foundations, built with large stones, but of a different shape. “Are Structures of the Argaric period“, so robust and so powerful that when the Muslims built the wall, they cemented it in many places,” he explains before pointing to other large nearby walls, which also date from the time when the hill was a settlement of the El Argar society (around 2200-1500 BC), such as the neighboring site of Peñalosa, in Baños de la Encina.

Due to the notable thickness of the walls of the houses, similar to that of defensive structures, and the richness of the funerary furniture found in some Argaric burials, the archaeologists of Nerea believe that the hill of the Alcazar of Baeza “was occupied by aristocratic and military elites» that from this height, from where one can see as far as Jaén, they would control access to the mineral deposits of the Sierra Mágina. According to him, “we are faced with one of the most important argaric colonies detected to date” which “It will become an international reference“.

Curiously, this more distant past of Baeza sometimes appears almost at ground level. “In some parts of the hill we found that Argaric habitats already appear at 20 or 30 centimeters and from there to a depth of two and a half meters We have at certain points the whole continuous sequence of the Bronze Age. This is something almost unprecedented», underlines Sabastro, convinced that the extraordinary stratigraphy of the Argaric remains of Baeza “is practically unique in Andalusia”.

A “family pantheon” with a surprise

A stone’s throw from Christian Street, some of these walls more than a meter wide were unearthed, which were part of two Argaric houses superimposed, one on top of the other. They are attached to the Almohad wall and some are even cut off by this canvas, but the Muslim construction did not destroy their kitchen or affect the environment. cistus burial which they discovered under their soil.

Among the stone slabs that serve as a coffin, archaeologists discovered the remains of a young man around 18 years old with a daggerwhich still retains organic remains of its handle and its scabbard, a silver bracelet and necklace. The news spread quickly in Baeza, but the researchers had a surprise in store for ABC: the tomb previously housed a child of about four or five years old, who was also buried with a necklacewith more pearls than the young man, and a silver bracelet and ringas well as with offerings of animals and seeds.

“These are very rich trousseaux for the society of the time which suggest that these individuals received important treatment which highlights their social status», interpret the Nerea researchers, who already in the 2023 campaign have documented two other Argaric burials, also in cist.

One of them was very close to the last discovery, in the Argaric levels of this same space between the Almohad wall and the ancient street from the Christian era. On this occasion, it was the grave of a woman aged 25 to 35 years old and approximately 1.58 meters tall, buried with a child aged 14 to 16 years old.

In another of the probes, opened a few meters away, they found under a large stone slab the remains of a man of about 40 years old, who died of a possible “stab» from the front, according to the anthropological study carried out by Iván Sánchez and Eva Urquieta. Beneath this individual, who had a metal object embedded between the torso bones, they found the remains of a woman around 40 years old who may have given birth to several children and may have died giving birth to the three- to six-month-old baby buried in a container in the same grave.

Although excavations in the late 1980s and early 1990s uncovered a few burials from this period, “previous knowledge we had about the presence of Argaric populations on the Hill did not suggest the existence of these populations. extraordinary importance remains of the wall that were exhumed”, the researchers noted already during the 2023 campaign and after the last excavations they were reaffirmed. “We are convinced that the entire surface currently unbuilt on the hill is all that was the germ of the city of Baeza and The settlement of the Argaric period will have a very, very large area because we found remains from the lowest to the highest”, emphasizes Sabastro, hoping that this place become an archaeological park. “The city deserves it.”