El Baldío archaeological site
The old settlement on the banks of the Guatén stream
The Wasteland (Torrejón de Velasco)
It is located on the left bank of the Guatén stream, tributary of the Tagus River, on an extensive plain that descends gently towards the stream. The territory has wide visibility over the valley and the escarpments where the Cerro de los Batallones paleontological site is located.
Judging by the documented structures, this place has been inhabited since at least the Bronze Age. The best represented cultural phase is that of the Iron Age, from which an interesting stratigraphic sequence has been documented that allows obtaining an approximate vision of how the general evolution of the place was and how domestic spaces were transformed and organized according to needs. of the settlers.
Two periods can be distinguished from the Bronze Age. The oldest would be represented by storage pits or silos. To the next (IX - VIII centuries BC) other shallow graves with ceramic remains typical of the Late Bronze period such as bowls and plates of tall shells would belong.
From the First Iron Age, a series of small pits were documented along with adobes with whitish plaster on their faces, which could indicate the presence of a domestic space formed by huts that has been dated by ceramic materials from the centuries VII - VI before Christ. The ceramics of this period are all handmade, of good quality, with dark pastes and burnished or spatulate finishes. The most represented forms are frustoconical bowls, plates, straight-walled vessels and globular vessels.
During the IV - III centuries BC. C. Carpenane constructions are still perishable structures, simple cabins delimited by ditches, with internal supports for posts, sometimes shod with stones, ceramics or adobes.
Between the III - II centuries BC. C., reaching perhaps until the beginning of the XNUMXst century BC. C., is when there is a greater urban development and the configuration of a network of roads that put into communication the different spaces of habitation and activity. The houses are rectangular in plan, with stone foundations, adobe walls and clay floors. The rooms overlap, progressively increasing their constructive quality and the number of auxiliary units, a circumstance that indicates that the complexity of productive and residential activities is increasing.
The slag remains and some of the pits interpreted as possible metallurgical furnaces indicate the development of a domestic-type industrial activity related to iron smelting.
The ceramics are of good quality, with light colored pastes and with smoothed finishes or with band paint in a wine red or orange tone. The main decorative motif of painted ceramics is geometric: parallel bands, concentric circles, semicircles, and circle segments.
Only three bronze objects were recovered, two of them complete, related to personal adornment, a bracelet, a rod and a Hispanic ring fibula.
This stage should be the delimitation of the perimeter of the site through a wall that would indicate the existence of a space linked to the town, an area of influence that would include the land for agricultural use.
Images
Archaeological performance
The site was detected during the archaeological survey phase carried out prior to the construction work on the Madrid - Ocaña Toll Highway (Radial-4), specifically between kilometer points 8,580 and 9,260.
