Mirobriga
Miróbriga was a city, possibly even a municipality , in the province of Lusitania in Roman times . The site now belongs to the area of the city of Santiago do Cacém , a district town of the Setúbal district in the Alentejo region , about 150 km south of Lisbon . The coastal town of Sines is around 15 km away. About 20,000 people live in Santiago do Cacém. The area of the municipality is about 120 km².
The ancient Miróbriga is located about one kilometer east of the modern community, and just like this on a hill from which the plain is manageable to the coast 15 km away. The Roman mines of Caveira, Mina de São Domingos and Aljustrel are around a day's journey inland. The nearest Roman city was Cetóbriga (now Setúbal ), 35 km north.
history
The first traces of settlement in the Miróbriga area are of pre-Roman origin. Investigations in the 1880s found traces from the 9th century BC. Chr., A continuous settlement existed from the 4th century BC. This Iron Age settlement was on the so-called "Castelo Velho", the hill on which the forum was later built. The buildings were surrounded by ramparts, remnants of which have been preserved east of the hill. It will have been an Ibero-Celtic hilltop settlement of the Castro culture . This can be seen from the suffix “–briga” which is typical for Celtic settlements on the Iberian Peninsula, there are more than 100 Iron Age places with this name. The prefix “Miro” can possibly be derived from the Mira River further south.
The ancient author Pliny mentions Miróbriga in his work Historia naturalis , there Miróbriga is listed as an oppidum , in the context of Olisipo and Salacia. In Roman times, Miróbriga belonged to the imperial province of Lusitania with the capital Augusta Emerita / Mérida . To what extent the place was involved in the provincial administration is controversial. In the opinion of Almeida, Miróbriga was a municipality , but this is not guaranteed in inscriptions and also contradicts the representation of Pliny. It is difficult to say whether Miróbriga was a municipality, possibly Mirobriga was raised to this status in the course of a large-scale conferment of Latin law by Vespasian . The settlement area found so far is relatively small for a city that is said to have had the importance of a municipality. The location, a little away from the streets that led to the capital Augusta Emerita, seems unsuitable to see Miróbriga as a supraregional center. The dedicatory inscriptions of two officials, in which there is talk of a splendidissimus ordo, show that it must have had a certain rank. This means that a certain upper class, probably also an ordo decurionum, a kind of local senate, can be assumed. The population is thought to have been around 2500, a number that corresponds to an average Roman settlement.
After a field inspection by William Biers in the eighties, the area was about 2.8 hectares. To what extent Miróbriga is sacred is difficult to say. In addition to the central temple on the forum, which was probably dedicated to the imperial cult , there is a smaller temple , probably dedicated to Venus . A possible interpretation by Biers as a “place of pilgrimage” is still unfounded. The Roman influence already begins in the times of the Punic Wars , towards the end of the 3rd century BC. The Celtic roots are emphasized, as evidenced by a tombstone from the 2nd century. On it, Caius Porcius Severus describes himself as the Miróbrigischer Celt (celticus mirobrigensis).
At the time of the eventual appointment of Miróbriga as a municipium in the Flavian era, extensive building work began. The forum and cobbled streets date from the third quarter of the 1st century, a sign of the economic boom after the civil war. The east baths and shortly thereafter also the hippodrome were built at the beginning of the 2nd century; the dating here is based on south Gallic terra sigillata , while the west baths were built at the end of the century and are characterized by North African ceramics. A rebuilding phase of the hippodrome can be assumed for the first third of the third century, coins from Alexander Severus (222-235) were found. Miróbriga's heyday seems to stretch from the Flavian period to the end of the 3rd century. There are hardly any finds from the 4th century, only some ceramics from the end of the century were found, but not in the forum area, but in the area of the residential buildings near the São Bras chapel from the 17th century.
Research history
The Roman ruins were well known as they always served as a supplier of building materials for the residents of the nearby towns. In the 16th century, the humanist André de Resende saw the ancient Merobrica in the ruins at the gates of Santiago, mentioned by Pliny in natural history. Resende's work “De antiquitatibus lusitaniae” appears in 1597, in which, supported by various inscriptions found here, he identifies the present ancient city as Miróbriga. The name Miróbriga for the area is also documented in inscriptions, the already mentioned tombstone of Caius Porcius Severus names Miróbriga as its origin.
The first excavations took place at the beginning of the 19th century on the instructions of the Archbishop of Čvora, Dom Friar Manuel do Cenáculo, but a scientific investigation of the findings was not carried out; the finds enlarged the bishop's private collection. The first publication was published in 1914 by J. Leite de Vasconcelos. The area was further investigated between 1922 and 1948 by the Santiago do Cacém born Dr. Cruz e Silva and later by Fernando de Almeida, one of Portugal's great archaeologists. He worked in Miróbriga from 1959 to 1978. Almeida draws an interim balance in his 1964 book "Ruinas de Miróbriga dos Célticos", a final publication was not possible due to his untimely death. He was also responsible for the extensive, albeit questionable, restorations of the baths and the forum.
In the 1980s, an international research group of archaeologists from the USA and Portugal was formed. The entire area was re-examined, including the hippodrome south of the settlement. The conclusion of these investigations was marked by the most comprehensive monograph on Miróbriga to date, published by William Biers and others in the Oxford International Series, number 451 from 1988. Finds from the excavations are on display in the Municipal Museum in Santiago do Cacém and in the newly built museum in the excavation site. The museum and the completely accessible area are managed by the Portuguese Institute for Architectural Heritage - IPPAR (Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico). The last excavations were from 2006 to 2010 in Miróbriga. Under the direction of Felix Teichner , primarily the residential area south of the thermal baths was examined.
The settlement
The forum
The urban forum was built on the highest point of the settlement, where the Iron Age settlement was found. It is about 250 m above sea level, from here you can see the entire area up to the coast. As is usual in a Roman city, the forum was the center of public life. The focus was a relatively small, open space of about 22 × 25.5 m in size, which was paved with limestone slabs. The complex is dated to the Flavian period through finds of southern Gallic terra sigillata .
This place is dominated by a podium temple with L-shaped wings, which together occupy a complete side of the forum. It is an antenna temple about 10 × 8 m in size with two side stairs as an entrance. It probably served the imperial cult. In the 1960s it was rebuilt by Almeida, where he also built architectural parts from the thermal baths area. Unfortunately, its reconstructions are not always scientifically documented, so that today's visitor to Miróbriga has a falsified picture of the ancient city. It is also the central temple that determines the highest point of the hill. All other buildings and the forum square are one level lower. This was made possible by a terracing in which the area for the individual buildings, primarily tabernae in the south and west, was partially cut into the rock.
Another important building is the Temple of Venus on the west side of the forum. It is a three-aisled temple of 10 × 15 m with an apse in the central nave, in which the base of an altar was also found. The importance of venus worship is underlined by the discovery of two dedicatory inscriptions to Venus and fragments of a Venus figure. South of the forum is a building over thirty meters long, probably at least two stories high. There are several partition walls in the building itself, presumably it is a market hall.
The baths
The Miróbrigas thermal baths are located southwest of the forum hill, at the lowest point of the settlement, about 20 m below its level. The thermal baths are two building complexes that together take up an area of 1100 m². You can see that the west thermal baths take up a larger area, especially since the entire complex has not yet been excavated. The east baths were built first, around the beginning of the 2nd century, followed by the west baths towards the end of the same century. However, since they are based on the same infrastructure, it is assumed that the plan to build the thermal baths came about at the same time. The water supply was ensured by a higher water tank, which was presumably fed from a nearby spring. The layout of the facility corresponds to the normal division of a bath complex in the western provinces with various water basins, sweat rooms, hot and cold baths, dressing rooms and latrines. Both parts of the bathroom were built using the opus incertum method, plastered on the outside and stuccoed on the inside, the floor covering was made of opus signinum .
The houses and streets
The streets of Miróbriga are based on the landscape and could not be laid out according to a Hippodamian system , which results from the fact that the Roman settlement developed from the Iron Age. The forum, which rises above all other buildings, serves as the center. The Celtic settlement was also located here. From there a road winds down the hill, which is crossed by another after about 100 m at the start of the residential buildings. The road to the north continues down the slope, its end has not yet been excavated. The southern extension leads to the thermal baths or past the thermal baths, crosses a bridge, probably from the 1st century AD, and continues into a residential area that is also still unexplored. There are more residential buildings along the route to the west. All streets are paved with limestone slabs about three meters in size, which lie on the ground without any substructure. Small canals sometimes flank the streets for drainage. The irregularity of the terrain allows the size of the property to vary considerably, differences in height resulting from the hillside location are compensated for by steps. The partly multi-storey houses and shops have simply leaned along the streets, nothing is known of any smaller cross streets. The residential area of Miróbriga was probably mainly to the west and south of the baths. To the south-east of the forum a kind of mansion with higher quality equipment can be located, which could possibly represent a better residential area. How far the residential area extended is not yet fully known; a field inspection by Biers in the 1980s showed a maximum spread of the finds of 2.8 hectares. What is definitely certain, however, is that the previously known residential buildings are not sufficient for the urban population, so there must be more houses. The western residential area, which is on the road to today's museum, shows continuous use from the first to the fourth century, it provides the most recent Roman finds in Miróbriga.
The circus
As the only known hippodrome in present-day Portugal, that of Miróbriga is something special. It was discovered in 1949 by Dr. Cruz e Silva when it was touched on during road works. It was then excavated by Almeida and the Portuguese-American excavation community. The circus is about 1 km south of the settlement, the more level terrain here is more suitable than the undulating profile near the city. A street (not yet found) should have connected both. The entrance to the hippodrome is in the southern part of the northeast-southwest-facing facility. The construction time is at the beginning of the 2nd century, a reconstruction phase is expected for the second third. The dimensions are about 359 m long and 77 m wide. This corresponds roughly to the average of such systems, such as in Mérida or Toledo, and is even larger than that in Tarraco ( Tarragona ). This suggests supra-regional importance. The foundations of the spina and the surrounding walls have been preserved, they were built in opus caementitium. On the south side, Almeida found traces of stables and shelter for animals and wagons. Nothing remains of the spectator stands, they were certainly made of wood.
literature
- Caius Plinius Secundus : Natural History . Translated and provided with an explanatory register by Christian Friedrich Lebrecht Strack. Revised and edited by Max Ernst Dietrich Lebrecht Strack. Unchanged reprographic reprint of the 1st edition Bremen 1853. 2nd unchanged edition. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1968.
- Fernando de Almeida: Ruínas de Miróbriga dos Célticos. (Santiago do Cacém) . Casa Portuguesa, Lisbon 1964 ( Edição da Junta Distrital de Setúbal 3).
- Maria Filomena Barata: Miróbriga. Roman Ruins . Instituto Português do Património Cultural - Departamento de Arqueologia, Lisbon 2001, ISBN 972-8087-84-5 ( Roteiros da arqueologia portuguesa 7).
- William R. Biers (Ed.): Mirobriga. Investigations at an Iron Age and Roman Site in Southern Portugal by the University of Missouri-Columbia, 1981-1986 . BAR, Oxford 1988, ISBN 0-86054-578-4 ( BAR - International series 451).
- Felix Teichner : Romanization and Celtic Resistance? The "small" cities in northwestern Hispania . In: Elisabeth Walde , B. Kainrath (Ed.): The self-portrayal of Roman society in the provinces in the mirror of the stone monuments . IX. International Colloquium on Problems of Provincial Roman Art. (Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, May 25-29, 2007). University Press, Innsbruck 2007, ISBN 978-3-902571-06-9 , pp. 335-348 ( Ikarus 2).
Coordinates: 38 ° 1 ′ N , 8 ° 41 ′ W