El Colegio archaeological site in Valdemoro
Archaeological site from the Chalcolithic, Final Bronze, Iron Age and Late Roman periods
The College (Valdemoro)
The site of "El Colegio" is located within the urban area of Valdemoro, next to the municipal school that gives it its name. It is located on a small promontory from which the Arroyo de la Villa was controlled. Despite its small size, this site has provided a complex stratigraphic sequence that testifies to the settlement of the place from the Chalcolithic to late Roman times.
The contexts associated with the Chalcolithic occupation are characterized by being silo-type structures, excavated underground, with the presence of bell-shaped ceramics of the Puntilla and Ciempozuelos types.
From the Final Bronze, a series of circular structures excavated in the ground have been documented. Human remains were documented in three of these silo-like structures.
The First Iron Age is represented by a large number of post holes that delimit shapes interpreted as cabin plants. Three have been located. They are elongated in shape, with one of the curved ends and in the case of the larger structure with a clear division of the interior space that must be interpreted as a response to the appearance of greater socioeconomic complexity, motivated by the progressive specialization of activities economic of the settlers. The presence of three homes on the floor of a cabin lined up near one of the walls, compared to their absence in the rest of the room, could suggest different uses for these spaces. In this sense, the location of two possible ovens in the vicinity of the cabins, of which only one retains the hearth, would support this idea of differentiated spaces within the same housing unit.
As for the materials documented in these cabins, they are included in the usual ones of the First Iron Age of the Madrid region: fine burnished black or chestnut ceramics with reticulated or brushed decoration, with ungulations (fingerprint left by the nail when pressed on the clay still fresh at the edge or neck) and mamelons (handles) with horizontal perforation that allow dating this phase of the site around the first half of the XNUMXth century and the XNUMXth century BC.
To the transition phase between the First and Second Iron Ages would belong a single structure, badly damaged, in which a home and a silo were found. It was built with a light base of small stones, screed with adobe and stone floor. The materials associated with this structure mark a key difference with those located in the previous structures, since together with the presence of hand-made ceramics some fragments of “Iberian” -type pottery are documented, with painted decorations of bands and red semicircles. .
The most important vestiges corresponding to the Second Iron Age. They are two rooms with a rectangular plan that conserved baseboards about 50 centimeters high and part of the collapse of the adobe walls. One of them had a continuous bench attached to the wall. The materials are not very abundant, highlighting two ceramic containers and a larger storage vessel. The only data available to assess the chronology of this phase comes from a Hispanic bronze ring fibula that could date from around the XNUMXth-XNUMXrd centuries BC.
Both the documented material elements, mills, furnaces, fusayolas, and the pollen analyzes carried out, speak of a small entity settlement, probably of a family rank, with an agricultural economy based on self-sufficiency due to a dispersed occupation of the territory.
The abandonment of the settlement, dated around the end of the XNUMXth or XNUMXrd century BC, was carried out gradually and peacefully, perhaps related to a change in the socioeconomic conditions of the region and associated with processes of population concentration. and increasing the social complexity of the groups that inhabited the southern Sub-plateau.
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Archaeological performance
The archaeological intervention dates back to 2001, when after a superficial survey, 63 mechanical soundings were carried out, of which those located to the west and south of the school were positive, discovering “silo” and “cabin bottom” type structures.
Excavation began in July 2002 by the company Arqueomedia SL and in 2004 it was excavated to its full extent by the company ARTRA, SL ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORKS, in the context of PERI 4 “Fuente de la Teja”