I recently participated in a conference organized by the City of Oviedo and Gustavo Bueno Foundation to discuss the latest archaeological discoveries made in Oviedo and force us to rethink the question of the ancient history of Oviedo.
OVIEDO "CENTURY VIII?
which he personally participated in, accompanied by D. J. Vicente Gonzalez (historian) and D. César García de Castro (Historian), was entitled: The place of Oviedo to the eighth century
OVIEDO "ROUND"
In recent months, archaeological investigations have been advancing on the fact realities that force us to review much of the history of Oviedo and reinforcing the thesis that the founding of Oviedo on a medieval town before, and not in the middle of nowhere, as deduced from some interpretations of the founding document Monasterio de San Vicente.
official history says:
"Although there previous settlements, the city was founded in 761 by two monks: Fromestano and his nephew Max, who went looking for a quiet place to settle. Thus came to the hill of 'Oveto', where they erected a church in honor of San Vicente. "
The presentation by me tried to present comparative arguments from the old planning to advance in the formulation of the proposal made evocative: "Oviedo's place until the eighth century.
OVETUM
URBAN FORM (click on image)
I have developed in several Articles arguments to propose the origin of the oppidum altoimperial of Oviedo and the hypothesis that this spot was called Lucus Asturum in origin, and later, in the Lower Empire, be renamed as Ovetum. All this is available at: http://ovetum.blogspot.com/
at the table summary form and could be configured Hill Ovetum place at the time they arrived and the monks Fromestano nephew Maximus in 761.
Calleva Atrebatum
A place perhaps abandoned for more than three hundred years and had the ruins of what was a high imperial Roman enclaves and amended during the third century, the image and likeness of the other mainland capitals NO.
What Fromestano and Maximus met?
The answer to this question perhaps can be understood by visiting the site of Calleva Silchester Atrebatum in the English county of Hampshire.
Atrebatum Calleva was an oppidum of the Iron Age and later, a city in the Roman province of Britannia and the civitas capital of the tribe Atrebates.
Its ruins are visited on a magnificent archaeological park near Silchester.: http://www.silchester.rdg.ac.uk/guide
Most Roman cities in the United Kingdom continued to exist after the end of the Roman period, and thus their remains are found in major urban centers of modern cities. Just as our cities of peninsular NO.
Calleva is unusual in that for unknown reasons, was abandoned shortly after the end of the Roman era. We can look at the current site as the time stopped in the V century, and thus we can imagine what was found by the monks at the site of the eighth century Oviedo.
The oppidum of Calleva covers a large area of \u200b\u200b40 hectares within an embankment walled polygonal. Much of the area of \u200b\u200bthe ruined walls are still visible. We can see the rectangular grid of its inland waterways and the location of its main buildings. The remains of the amphitheater was added in the year 70 AD and situated outside the city walls, you can also see clearly. Subsequently
oppidum at Calleva was protected under the imperial period by a polygonal wall which reduced the original urban area and setting a new road layout.
Today the area within the walls is largely farmland with no visible features of differentiation, highlighting a small medieval church in a corner.
Calleva was partially excavated between 1890 and 1909, and excavation provided valuable information about everyday civic life in the early centuries of our era. While excavation techniques of the time were sufficient to deal with buildings with stone foundations, further work showed that the wooden buildings dominated the first and second centuries AD, and that the first excavations were unable to recover the evidence of these buildings.
Calleva's example, its urban altoimperial and its subsequent amendments, the excavated buildings and especially the small church "Romanesque" allow us to evoke the Oviedo in the early centuries, and before the reconstruction took place in medieval times.
OVIEDO - ; Calleva
not only the current configuration of the streets of Oviedo "round" matches the layout of the Silchester Roman oppidum , but the polygonal walls of both enclaves can recognize the same urban idea.
Both sites were protected in times of difficulty leaving out part of its original configuration.
Of all the coincidences that both sites have us recognize that surprises me most is the early church excavated in the center of the oppidum, and that its structure allows us recognize some of the buildings of the Romanesque Asturian and especially to the primitive church of San Tirso.
Romanesque church of Calleva
The site now can be seen in Calleva not have to be very different to that found by Fromestano and his nephew Maximo century VIII.
sources say that there were earlier settlements when they reached the hill 'Oveto', and at that place erected a church in honor of San Vicente.
Fruela Years later I got up other buildings and Alfonso II in Oviedo in 792 became capital realm.
Oviedo We can see in the present, as most of its oldest buildings, its streets and its walls, serves the same geometry found at the site of Calleva. They are ancient walls built on foundations that remained in the basement of "Oveto" in the same way that they remain in the abandoned Calleva.
Both places share the same "genetic code" of Roman origin, in Calleva history stopped in the V century, in Oviedo residents continue to use its urban form primordial to the present.
finished my presentation by making a call to continue to support publicly the work of archaeologists Asturias in the city and surely in the near future will bring great surprises.
© Carlos Sánchez-Montaña. 2009.
NOTES:
http://www.silchester.rdg.ac.uk/guide
http://www.silchester.rdg.ac.uk/victorians/vic_home. php
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