A funerary stele saved in an agricultural warehouse reveals a Celtiberian metropolis below the Soria municipality of Borobia | Culture | EUROtoday

In 1971, on the outskirts of the municipality of Borobia (Soria, 250 inhabitants), three Roman funerary steles have been discovered representing horsemen armed with spears and shields. They have been transferred to the Numantine Museum in Soria. But shortly after, in the identical place, a lacking a part of certainly one of them was discovered. Surprisingly, the piece was saved in a neighborhood agricultural warehouse. In 2024, this fragment was rediscovered and analyzed by a number of researchers from the Institute of Heritage and Humanities of the University of Zaragoza. The conclusions of the examine of the piece, printed by the journal Spanish Archeology Archive, are that the tombstone could symbolize Celtiberian warriors (Roman auxiliary troops) and that it was positioned on the outskirts of the disappeared the city (fortified metropolis) of Virovia. It is understood that this metropolis existed, not as a result of there are writings from the time about it, however as a result of cash from its mint have been discovered. Until now its location was an enigma. That is, relying on the job The warriors of Borobia. A brand new Latin opisthograph stele from the province of Soria, Under the present Borobia is the Celtiberian Virovia.

The fragmented stele that has been accomplished measured about 140 centimeters. It has the form of a parallelepiped and was labored on either side. In each, it reveals two horsemen, certainly one of them carrying a spear that rests on his shoulder. On one aspect, an inscription reads: “For Sempronio Aninio, son of Aplonius, Carisio Ambatus paid it with his money” and, on the opposite, “for Lucius Sempronio Ambatus, son of Aninius, he was in charge of doing it.” According to the authors of the examine (docs Marta Chordá Pérez, Borja Díaz Ariño and Alberto Jiménez Carrera), the tombstone “combines clearly Latin and indigenous elements.”

Some of the cash from the Virovia mint have been discovered throughout the municipal space of ​​Borobia. “The discovery of several pieces of uirouia [nombre de la ceca]added to the proximity between the ancient and recent toponyms, allows us to suspect that this city could have really been found in this place.” In addition, the researchers add, “in several of the tastings carried out on the occasion of archaeological intervention carried out in the Borobia castle [en completa ruina] In 2018, at levels greatly altered by the land adaptation works from the medieval period, some Celtiberian ceramic materials were recovered, which are consistent with the existence of a settlement in ancient times.”

In front of the castle is also located the El Cabezo hill, approximately one hectare. This hill, according to experts, has the “orographic characteristics that make it suitable to have been the site of a small the town Celtiberian.” Pre-Roman folks constructed their settlements in excessive areas and guarded them from their enemies with partitions and moats.

Since neither the historians Pliny and Ptolemy, nor the Antonine Itinerary (a kind of Michelin Guide of the time) mention Viriovia, experts believe that the city could have disappeared in the Flavian era (1st and 2nd centuries) and became a Latin municipality. “It would, subsequently, be a case just like different Celtiberian cities positioned on the southern slope of Moncayo, whose names we all know completely from their financial coinage, additionally dated between the ultimate many years of the second century and the start of the primary.” Although these towns They disappeared, “their toponyms were fossilized, preserved to the present.”

Warriors on horseback, like those seen on tombstones, can be considered one of the most deeply rooted elements in the visual culture of the native populations of the Duero Valley and the Iberian System. “The majority of the coins minted by the Celtiberian mints between the second half of the 2nd century BC [a. C.] and the initial decades of the 1st century BC show on their reverses the image of a galloping horseman, usually armed with a spear,” they explain.

The municipality of Borobia has not been the subject of any systematic archaeological exploration to date, although, unfortunately, there are indications of intense clandestine excavation activity in different places. Even so, Celtiberian and Basque coins have been located within the urban area. Of these, several from uirouia stand out, a mint that minted bronze coins in the final decades of the 2nd century BC. C., and which included lance riders.

“The iconography of the horseman performed a key function within the development of the general public picture of the Hispanic Celtic warrior elites for the reason that finish of the Iron Age who, from the 2nd century BC, started to serve kind of repeatedly as auxiliary troops within the Roman military. It is seductive,” they say, “the concept that the sturdiness of that specific iconography on steles from the start of the imperial period may very well be associated exactly to the recruitment of items of auxiliary troops of cavalry in Celtiberia within the time of Augustus or his instant successors. From the center of the first century AD, the motif of the warrior on horseback, often armed with a spear and generally attacking an enemy mendacity at his toes and adopted by a servant on foot, turned very fashionable within the funerary steles of cavalry troopers deployed on the boundaries of the empire.

“The peculiar iconography of the Borobia stelae therefore refers to models linked to military environments.” Since those that commissioned the tombstones and the deceased didn’t have household ties – their surnames (praenomen, cognomen) don’t coincide, consultants imagine that they’re “comrades in arms who commissioned the funeral ceremonies for their dead colleagues.”

“The epigraphic complex recovered in Borobia,” they conclude, “necessarily forces us to ask ourselves about the hypothetical existence of a settlement of a certain size in this place. It is an area of ​​singular strategic importance in Antiquity, since it was located on the route that connected the cities of Bilbilis. [Calatayud] and Numantia [Soria]allowing access from the Jalón valley to the headwaters of the Duero and, in addition, it had notable mineral wealth with evidence of having been exploited since the Iron Age.”