Lancia Archaeological Site: An Asturian and Roman City in Spain
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 3.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Classical
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Iron Age, Classical
- Civilizations
- Roman
- Site type
- City
On this page11 sections
History
The Lancia Archaeological Site in Spain, near Villasabariego in León, preserves an ancient city first occupied by the Astures and later rebuilt by the Romans. Its best-defined pre-Roman settlement dates mainly from the late second and first centuries BC, while the Roman city developed during the first century AD. Lancia was regarded as the most important city of the Astures, and some historians have proposed that it served as their capital, although that interpretation remains unconfirmed.
Asturian origins
Human activity at the site extends back before the Roman period, with finds attributed to the Lower Paleolithic, Late Neolithic, early Metal Ages, and Second Iron Age. The most clearly defined pre-Roman occupation belongs to the later Iron Age. During the late second and first centuries BC, the settlement consisted of domestic areas with houses, hearths, ovens, storage features, and working surfaces.
The Astures were an ancient population of northwestern Iberia whose territory included parts of present-day León and neighboring regions. Lancia became their principal urban center before the Roman conquest. In 25 BC, the Roman general Publius Carisius subdued the city during the wars against the Cantabrians and Astures, the campaigns through which Rome brought these northern Iberian peoples under its control. Carisius ordered his soldiers not to burn Lancia, intending to leave it standing as a monument to the Roman victory.
Roman urban development
After the conquest, the settlement continued and was transformed into a Roman city during the first century AD. Lancia remained active throughout that century and displayed economic strength in the late first and second centuries. It belonged first to the province of Tarraconensis, one of the major Roman provinces in Hispania, and from AD 298 to Gallaecia, the later province organized in the northwest of the peninsula.
Ancient geographical and historical works place Lancia within the Roman road network and describe its inhabitants. The Antonine Itinerary, a list of routes and stations, placed it on Route I between Ad Legio VII Gemina and Camala. Ptolemy, a second-century Greek-Egyptian geographer and astronomer, and the Roman authors Pliny the Elder, Florus, and Cassius Dio also referred to the city or its people. The fifth-century Christian historian Orosius likewise preserved a reference to Lancia. Cassius Dio described it as the most important city of the Astures.
Lancia may have received municipal status under the Flavian emperors, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, who ruled from AD 69 to 96 and expanded Roman citizenship and municipal organization in parts of Hispania. An inscription from Tarragona records Lucius Iunius Maro Aemilius Paternus as having served twice as a duumvir, one of two annually appointed municipal magistrates, at Lancia. He later held civic and religious offices at Asturica Augusta and Tarraco. His membership in the Quirina tribe, a Roman civic voting tribe used in identifying citizens and dating some careers, places his career in the Flavian or post-Flavian period, approximately AD 110 to 140.
The proposed municipal status remains debated. Offices such as duumvir, priest, aedile, and town councilor could also occur in communities without formal municipal status. Archaeological evidence supports the possibility of municipal reorganization but does not establish it conclusively. Major urban works in the late first or early second century and during the second century included the construction or alteration of the central baths and the construction of the food market. These projects may have accompanied civic reorganization or private benefaction by local elites, but their precise motivation is uncertain.
Abandonment and later investigation
The city was definitively abandoned in the fourth century at least in its central area, although limited occupation may have continued around the periphery. References to Lancia can be traced to the sixteenth century. Systematic archaeological interest and excavation developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the work of investigators including Saavedra, Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, Father Fita, Gago Rabanal, J. Sanz Martínez, Antonio Blázquez, José María Luengo, Francisco Jordá Cerdá, Eladio Isla, Carmen García Merino, and Manuel Abad.
Excavations continued from the nineteenth century onward, and annual campaigns are now conducted by the Provincial Council of León through the León Institute of Culture. The archaeological zone was declared a Spanish Asset of Cultural Interest in the archaeological-zone category in 1994. Construction of the A-60 motorway between León and Valladolid also exposed an industrial quarter, a basilical-plan building, a necropolis, and other remains close to the central settlement.
Most historians identify the site at Villasabariego with Asturian and Roman Lancia, although the identification has been disputed. Alternative proposals place Lancia at the hillfort of Las Labradas near Arrabalde in Zamora. Debate has focused on the evidence for the city’s location, including the interpretation of nearby Roman military sites, the extent of the settlement, and the limited inscriptions and coins associated with it. The team supporting the Villasabariego identification points to the size of El Castro, approximately 33 hectares compared with approximately 23 hectares at Arrabalde, and to its position beside the river Astura on the route between Camala and Legio. The Antonine Itinerary’s spelling as “Lance” and uncertainty about several place-names complicate the comparison. The nearby industrial area has been interpreted as the settlement called Sublancia, although that identification is also not conclusive.
Remains
The site occupies a plateau between the rivers Porma and Esla, the latter known in Roman times as the Astura. The elevated terrace overlooks the surrounding alluvial plains and lies within fertile agricultural territory. Averaging about 840 metres above sea level, it slopes gradually from northwest to southwest and forms a Quaternary terrace approximately 40 metres above the Esla. The ancient urban area is broadly associated with El Castro and includes the minor areas El Pico del Castro, Valdealbura, La Encrucijada, El Praduño, Socesáreo, and El Talancón. Surviving remains are exposed in parts of this wider area.
Pre-Roman settlement layers
Pre-Roman remains are concentrated in domestic and working features from the Second Iron Age. House bases formed by driven posts, adobe walls, compacted-earth floors, hearths, ovens, ash-filled pits, fire areas, postholes, small silos, and clay-lined basins reveal the organization of earlier habitation. Other deposits contain Celtiberian pottery, small stone concentrations, oval clay slabs sealing larger pits, residual floors, a worked deer-antler handle, and a charcoal-filled basin whose clay surface reddened through heating.
Two pre-Roman levels lay beneath the Roman baths, especially below Room VIII, later used as the changing room, or apodyterium. The upper level included an irregular pavement of small river pebbles, local-stone alignments of uncertain purpose, animal remains, a fragment of a rotary quern, and a piece of Italian terra sigillata, fine Roman tableware with a smooth, usually red surface. Together, these finds belong to a transitional area at the end of the pre-Roman settlement and the beginning of Roman occupation. The earlier level contained rows of postholes around compacted and sometimes layered clay floors associated with domestic spaces.
A carefully constructed pavement found north of the baths in 1999 used small river cobbles, had regular edges, and sloped slightly toward its center. A reused fragment of a reciprocating quern formed part of the surface. Bronze finds include a symmetrical brooch, a brooch spring, and a button with a central perforation. Further worked antler or deer-horn handles belong to an assemblage linked with cultural developments in the Celtiberized central Meseta.
Baths and civic center
Central baths
The medium-sized central baths were designed primarily for practical use. Their rooms included changing areas, cold and heated bathing spaces, exercise areas, and latrines. In their final phase, the complex was divided into two sections, probably allowing women and men to use it at the same time. Repeated reuse of building materials left the surviving structures in mediocre condition. Additional baths stood in the Valdealbura area, where two incomplete rooms are known, one heated and one unheated.
Food market
The macellum, a purpose-built market for foodstuffs, had three main parts. An entrance opened onto one of the city’s cardines, probably the principal north-south street. Behind it stood a commercial block with six shops, followed by a courtyard probably used as a pen for animals intended for slaughter and sale. Its construction formed part of the urban development associated with the late first or second century AD.
Forum area
Aerial photography places the probable forum close to the market and baths, indicating that these buildings stood within or beside the civic center. The exact surviving structures and the arrangement of the forum remain uncertain.
Industrial and funerary quarter
Work on the A-60 motorway revealed a nearby quarter containing furnaces and foundries, a building with a basilical plan, a necropolis, and other archaeological remains. Its physical closeness to the central settlement has led to its interpretation as Sublancia, a place associated with Lancia in the ancient evidence. The relationship between this quarter and the principal urban area remains an interpretation rather than a conclusively demonstrated identification.
