Iruña-Veleia
Iruña-Veleia is an important excavation site in the area of the municipality of Iruña de Oca (Iruña Oka) in the province of Álava (Araba) of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country , in the immediate vicinity of Trespuentes. The first reports about the ruins have been around since the 16th century. The first excavations took place around 1900. Research has been ongoing in various campaigns since 1949 up to the present day.
The origin of the finds extends over a millennium and a half from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC to the 5th century AD. So they present the late Bronze Age , early and late pre-Roman Iron Age and Roman rule. The Roman city of Veleia had an area of over one square kilometer.
The discovery of a considerable number of pottery shards from the 3rd to 5th centuries with Basque text chunks, mostly in Latin script , caused a stir . Just as striking are the around 270 inscriptions and drawings on ceramic (shards) found in the house of Pompeia Valentina , which was permanently inhabited from the 1st to the 5th century, including Egyptian motifs and correctly written hieroglyphs . In November 2008, a group of researchers suggested that these discoveries, which were initially described as historical, were forgeries, whereupon the excavation director Eliseo Gil was removed from office. Although the latter rejected the allegations, in January 2009 he was unable to prove the authenticity of his findings in front of the parliament of the province of Álava.
In June 2020, Gil was sentenced to two years and three months in prison for his counterfeiting.
Web links
- Official website of the archaeological site (Spanish, Basque, English)
Coordinates: 42 ° 50 ′ 32 " N , 2 ° 47 ′ 15" W.
- Hector Iglesias: Les inscriptions de Veleia-Iruña Les inscriptions de Veleia-Iruña (version entièrement revue et augmentée d'un index alphabétique). (PDF; 2.8 MB) Artxiker, bibliothèque numérique d'IKER, Center de recherche sur la langue et les textes basques, Baiona-Bayonne.
- Diputación Foral de Alava: Informes sobre los grafitos de Iruña-Veleia (reports and opinions on the inscriptions of Iruña-Velaia). November 19, 2008, Retrieved January 25, 2017 (Spanish).
- Mike Elkin: The Veleia Affair . In: Archeology . tape 62 , no. 5 , 2009 (English, archeology.org [accessed January 25, 2017]).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gara : El comité de expertos certifica la falsedad de los polémicos hallazgos de Iruñea-Veleia. November 20, 2008.
- ^ Diario Vasco : Eliseo Gil mantiene la autenticidad de los hallazgos del yacimiento de Iruña Veleia. November 20, 2008.
- ^ Diario Vasco: Eliseo Gil no aporta pruebas ante las Juntas de Álava en el caso del yacimiento Iruña-Veleia. January 15, 2009.
- ↑ Dos años de cárcel por falsear hallazgos arqueológicos en el yacimiento de Iruña-Veleia , elpais.com of June 10, 2020
- ↑ Spanish archaeologist gets jail sentence for faking his finds , cnn.com, June 12, 2020