Vega de Belvis archaeological site

The Vega de Belvis archaeological site is a rural settlement in full relationship with the fertile plain of the Jarama river, located within the communications network that ran through this area of ​​the Madrid region in Roman times.

The complex had a urban pars (owner's dwelling area) with a residential building with a central patio or peristillum, from which the different rooms and spaces were distributed. The patio had a quadrangular plan, with a central area under the open sky and the sides covered by an arcaded corridor, which was the place of transit and access to the rooms. In the center of this patio there would probably be a landscaped space or viridarium delimited by low walls that allowed visibility and more direct contact with the rooms. Originally it was decorated with wall paintings, still visible in some preserved section of plinth. In the interstices between the different sections of the low wall that surrounded the interior garden, the limestone bases that supported the portico were located, articulated in four corridors with roofs to a water. Only the remains of two of the rooms remained, both paved with hydraulic concrete.

South of the urban pars a rustic pars (area for hacienda workers) where they highlighted a complex of constructions associated with each other that have been interpreted as a smithy. It is probably an open space, paved with a cobblestone, where a multitude of slags, two adobe homes and a small oven were found. Surely one of these hearths or forges would be used for prolonged carburation and low temperature annealing of iron (less than 800ºC) while hot forging and welding works would be carried out in the other hearth, where a higher temperature was necessary , which was obtained by operating a manual bellows. Remains of another large oven were left, built with adobes, which surely functioned as an industrial oven for the firing of construction materials such as tiles and bricks. 

Another building to highlight was a horreum (a place for storing food products, mainly wheat) built on a raised pavement supported by stone supports, which had preserved their foundations and reinforced the walls by incorporating buttresses.

On the eastern margin of the site, the location of a small construction with a quadrangular plan and a semicircular apse at its head, which was interpreted as a private place of worship, should be noted.

It seems probable that this agricultural operation began to function towards the change of era or within the first third of the XNUMXst century after Christ, having its greatest development towards the Flavian era and extending its activity until well into the XNUMXnd century AD. C. 

Since the end of the third century, the economic, political and social crisis that the Empire suffered caused the abandonment of many large estates. Perhaps that is why the Vega de Belvis settlement was depopulated or drastically reduced during a good part of the third century and the beginning of the fourth, with the next phase of occupation already in late Roman times, in the middle or end of that century. Thus it seems to be glimpsed by the recovered ceramic material, among which the fragments of terra sigillata late Hispanic, whose production would start in the last third of the fourth century.

The archaeological intervention in the Vega de Belvis deposit was carried out due to the duplication project of the M-111 road, in the R-2 section to M100 and M-106, at the request of the General Directorate of Historical Heritage of the Community of Madrid , since it was in an Archaeological Protection Zone.