CIUDAD DE VASCOS

A Hispano-Muslim town inhabited between the 9th and 12th centuries CE, which was declared a historical-artistic monument in 1932. It’s located in the West of the current province of Toledo, in the municipality of Navalmoralejo, where there currently stands an “Interpretation Centre” providing videos, explanatory panels, and an exhibition of pieces found in the archaeological digs.

Known by the inhabitants of nearby towns, it was used from the end of the Middle Ages and during the Modern Age as a pasturing spot and a spot for agricultural activities. In this way, Muslim remains underwent certain alterations which made their identification difficult. It was in this context that archaeological excavations started in 1975, funded from the 1980s by the Educacion and Science Council, and led by Professor Ricardo Izquierdo Benito of the University of Castile-La Mancha.

The name of the town in Muslim times has been the object of controversy. Nowadays it seems clear that it was Nafza (from the name of a tribe of the same name), belonging to Basak, one of the districts of Talabira (Talavera de la Reina). After being abandoned, it was the name of the territory that was preserved in tradition, finally becoming identified with the town and turning into the current term “Vascos”. The town was located in a remote área of difficult access, surrounded by the river Huso. It was founded around the late 9th century CE, with the aim of controlling the territory.

In the historical context of civil wars within Al-Andalus, known as the First Fitna, many rural áreas like this (occupied by Berbers) became fortified. It appears that what was first built in Vascos was a small military fortress which depended from the Arab-descended Umayyad power in Cordoba, the capital of the Emirate. These fortresses were known as husun or hisn dependiendo de su importancia. Later on, the fortress became a citadel when the settlement grew and the town was built, an act which entailed a new political and legal status, requiring nomad peoples from the área or immigrants to settle there and adopt and urban way of life. This possibly happened in Vascos during the reign of the first caliph of Al-Andalus, Abd al-Rahman III or that of his son Al-Hakam II (between 930 and 960 CE). During the next period of the Taifa kingdoms, in the 11th century, Vascos belonged to the kingdom of Toledo, on the frontier with the enemy kingdom of Badajoz. In that hostile climate, which grew harsher under Christian pressure from the North, its military role also increased. 

Fianlly, the town came under Castilian-Leonese power at the time (1085 CE) when the King of Toledo Al-Quadir surrendered and handed all his lands over to Alfonso VI. As a consequence, the Muslim population was forced to leave the area with all the belongings they could carry with them.  

The town of Vascos is divided into different areas, on the basis of its two main parts. That of the town itself, which was within the town walls, the Madina (Arabic for “town”), within which rose the main building, the “Alcazaba” or Citadel, later known by Christians as “Alcázar”. As for the town outside the walls, it remains mostly unexcavated, and is not very well known due to its more modest and ill-preserved remains. The Vascos Madina spreads over a total of some 8 hectares. It was delimited to the North by a stone and adobe walls, adapted to the irregular terrain, and crowned by quadrangular towers. It had a North-South orientation, flanked by two gates (of which two have been preserved, the South and the West gates) and four smaller “portholes” or openings in the wall for the removal of rubbish and rainwater, and not too visible from outside. Due to the mixed form of its construction, it seems clear that the wall was built in a short time by different work gangs working at the same time. Within this Madine rose the Citadel, the centre of political and military power, to the Northwest of the town, next to the Huso river. It was renovated and enlarged several times (the different spaces can still be seen inside), particularly during the last decades of Muslim occupation, when many smaller spaces were built to house military troops. It was during those final times when the “main” Mosque was also built inside the Citadel.

With the Christian conquest, the Citadel was still used as a watchtower by a small Castilian troop, which also used the Mosque as a church and burial place. The rest of the town had already been deserted, and its final abandonment must have taken place before the end of the 12th century. However, the Citadel, from its beginnings, had the characteristics of a fortress within the town itself: it had a wall defended by towers, a barbican (a security ante-wall), and a double-gate entry through a passage in an upwards slope. These were impressive security measures towards the population itself. Moreover, it is the only áaea in the dig which is thought to have been occupied in Roman and Visigothic times by some sort of worship building, such as a shrine. And even before that: remains of a small Bronze Age settlement have been found under the Islamic buildings. 

Outside the Citadel and within the Madina were the houses, of different qualities: the most luxorious ones had more than seven or eight rooms with slate floors around a central patio. (Most houses were much more modest). The materials found in the digs show that there were pens for small animals inside the houses, and that there probably were “specialised” neighbourhoods: shops in some areas, manufactures (including metal) in others. There was another, “minor” Mosque, smaller than the main one but built when the town was first founded in a neighbourhood near the Citadel Hill. Like all Muslim towns, the layout of its streets (whose pavement was the rock itself, sometimes carved) was irregular, even more here due to the irregular terrain. Even so, there was a cobbled main street which probably went from the Citadel to the South gate.

 As the town was not destroyed or suddenly abandoned, most valuable objects were taken away by their owners. Even so, much crockery has been found, of different kinds depending on its function: cooking, storage, transportation, or preservation, in addition to objects with leisure purposes (in stone or brick), such as chips for games or tic-tac-toe. Metallic objects have also been found, such as nails and locks, iron ornaments, and bronze bracelets, pins, and cosmetic objects. Also agricultural objects, such as loom pieces, scissors, scythes, needles… and some small bronze coins with Arabic inscriptions. But above all, remains of building materials, such as brick and tiles, over the remains of collapsed houses.  

Outside the walls spread the suburbs, which, as in any other Hispano-Muslim town, were located certain economic and commercial activities (the Market). But Burial Grounds were also located in this area. There were two of these in Vascos: the main one, very badly preserved, to the South of the town, and another one to the West. Graves were simple pits, half a metre deep, which were not even marked from the outside with gravestones. Of course, corpses were laid following Islamic ritual: on the side, on the right shoulder, arms along the body, bent knees, facing South or Southeast. It is known that in Vascos, the tanneries, where hides and leather were tanned, were in the Northwest suburbs, next to one of the gates, not far from the oil press area.

Proximity to what is known as Arroyo de la Mora (“the Moorish Woman’s Stream”, which leads to the nearby rive Huso), and which surrounded the town on the North, placed all activies related to the need for water in this area. For this reason, small dams were built to create reservoirs: some have been located. The Public Baths were also located here. This place (the Hamman), in addition to performing social and hygienic functions, also played a religious role, related to the necessary purification which every Muslim must carry out in order to pray in the Mosque. Excavations have yielded structures which combine stone, adobe, and local slate slabs, in which the different wardrobe, cold, tepid, and hot bath areas can still be seen. 

LA ALDEHUELA DOLMEN

This dolmen, found in the estate known as La Aldehuela, was raised more than 4,500 years ago by Bronze Age people, and seems to be a circular funerary chamber with a triple ring.
This structured was slightly modified by agricultural activity, but even so this dolmen can be seen to be composed of a series of twelve stone blocks with a height of up to 1,80 m, only one part of which still remains on the ground. These stone blocks are huge granite slabs in a circle, creating a chamber. This chamber is accessed by a corridor formed by two rows of six lower blocks, among which can be seen a slate block with an engraved bowl and another block which has fallen into the chamber.

The corridor also presents a number of engravings of pans and very schematic anthropomorphic figures simulating human figures. These bowls are semi-spherical cavities whose meaning is unknown, although speculations have been made regarding their symbolic nature, their possible use in certain rituals, or their being simply astronomical maps.

The entire megalithic ensemble is surrounded and covered by a barrow formed by the accumulation of soil and small stones.

Silex knives, pins, rough earthenware… have been found inside the Dolmen, as well as some inscriptions on some of its stones. It seems to date from some 3,000 years BCE.

Measurements: the corridor is 7.70 m long and 1.80 m wide. The concentric circles are 7 m large, with the outer one measuring 6 m and the middle one 4,5 m. 
 

AZUTÁN DOLMEN

Discovered and excavated near the town of Azután, this is a wonderful example of local magalithic architecture. Astonishingly, it dates from 4,500 BCE. The Azután Dolment was the first of the megalithic remains to be found in the South Plateau.

The dolmen was subjected to systematic excavations and studies from the early 1980s until 2001, and still has intact archaeological remains, as well as remains from an underlying hábitat. It has a huge chamber and corridor structure and a lintel covering, where burials were made and collective ossuaries placed from the Middle to the Final Neolithic (5th millennium BCE) and during the Bronze Age (in its Maritime Bell-Shaped period, during the 4th millennium BCE), whereas the habitat inside the barrow displays a 6th-millenium chronology. The archaeological remains documented and found near the dolmen are based on abundant evidence of earthenware, bone work, stone work – carved and polished – as well as some beads. To all this must be added the obvious total ornamentation of the funerary space by menas of engravings and fine incisions with wavy and zigzagging lines, as well as wide geometric and anthropomorphic engravings, and even bas-reliefs and paintings in the chamber stone blocks, as well as free-standing figures of a sculptural nature (menhirs) within the chamber space.

Also significant from the archaeological point of view, in addition to its intrinsic monumental nature, is its connection to water flows, as it stands near to the Tagus river and to the Linares and Anguilucha streams, and is also linked to underground water flows in the same archaeological areas.