Archaeology in the Orchard
The treasure of Sant Joan d’Alacant. It was hidden in the house of Antonio Quereda Chápuli in 1823. MARQ Archive
The Parish of San Juan Bautista, the old town, the imposing Torres de la Huerta or the Magnificent farms farms, are just an example of the rich heritage of Sant Joan, but the vegetable garden, with its system of ditches, farm implements, the working techniques employed in the field and the traditions of its people, are also part of this heritage material and inmaterial and the history of the town.
A story that tells us the presence of pirates and smugglers in our municipality, but also, the history of merchants and labourers; simple people and workers, who had to face and overcome wars and diseases. They also lived moments of joy and joy, bequeathing to us a cultural legacy of which we are heirs. That is why we must give them back their voice, their memory, learn from their history and take all the necessary measures so that this historical and archaeological legacy is not lost.
The Neolitic Period
The town of Sant Joan d’Alacant is immersed in the so-called Huerta de Alicante, an alluvial plain produced mainly by the depositions of the river Seco and detritic materials generated by the trawls of ravines and wadis, which make up a very fertile soil and suitable for agricultural cultivation. The quality of these soils, together with the existence of fountains, springs and lake areas, formed an ideal place for their habitability.
The first Neolithic communities that reached the coast of Alicante, they did it in small boats or wooden canoes, through the cabotage navigation. In them, they not only transported all the members of the clan, but they transported all the tools and animals necessary to settle in a new place. The studies conducted by the research team COPHIAM in the Cerro de las Balsas, have allowed us to know that these new settlers settled in the Huerta de Alicante in a dispersed way around 3990 – 3960 B.C., in small cabins of circular plant that were elaborated with cañizo and waterproofed with post of beef. These cabins had a home in their central part that would serve both to cook and to heat the environment.
The importance of belonging to the group, animal domestication, cultivation by irrigation or contact with other nearby populations, are part of the features that can be seen in these first populations. Far from imagining the Huerta de Alicante as an idyllic place, we must think that these populations resorted to fishing, gathering, hunting, shellfish farming and all those activities that allowed them to survive in a real struggle for survival.
Bronze Age
During the Bronze Age, the settlement model changed. The populations, which until then inhabited the Huerta Alicantina in a dispersed way, tended to group and occupy the higher areas, which provided them with greater visual control over their environment and protection.
The most important deposit of this period, we find it in the Serra Grossa or Sierra de San Julián. Dating from around 1800 B.C. it was excavated by Father Belda in 1931 and later re-studied by Enrique Llobregat Conesa. It documented a series of quadrangular structures that were identified as possible defense towers and a series of terraced houses, also rectangular, with stone plinths and adobe elevations. These houses also had wooden poles, driven into the ground, which would serve to hold the wooden beams and branches of which the roofs would be formed.
These dwellings, which adapted to the different slopes of the mountain range, formed a kind of defensive belt that, together with a wall and the aforementioned towers, would provide the settlement with greater protection. Although we are not aware of the concrete causes for which this population decided to settle in height and take so many protective measures, we can intuit them.
The Bronze Age was a broad, turbulent and conflict-ridden historical period. Tools intended for hunting, such as bows and azagayas, gave way to the appearance of swords and halberds, tools whose main function was war and, that were in the hands of a warrior elite that dominated both the rest of the population and the resources of the area.
Although these settlements were at height, it was necessary to establish a series of huts that were closer to the fields of cultivation and natural resources, such as water. Both on the Chinchorro road and in the Juncaret ravine, hut bottoms have been found that were usually occupied and that served to store the tools of tillage and ceramic production.
Again, the field played a fundamental role in providing all the necessary resources to its population, but the scarcity of minerals, especially copper and tin, kept it away from the most important commercial circuits of the time.
The Orientalist Period and Iberian Culture
There is an archaeological hiatus between the Bronze Age and the Iberian culture that developed in these lands between the 6th and 3rd centuries B.C. However, thanks to the Latin author Rufo Festo Avieno, we know that from the river Alebus or Vinalopó until Dianium or Denia, Alicante was populated by gymnasts (literally means nudes). These populations received this name because the military panoply they carried was characteristic of light warriors or skirmishers: hondas, venablos, afalcatados knives and caetras or rodelas.
With the arrival of the Phoenicians, an intense commercial relationship was established with the indigenous populations, since the first sought to supply the markets of the Middle East with gold, silver and tin, while the natives were attracted by the manufactured products produced in the East such as: fabrics, ointments, alabaster, decorated ostrich eggs, high quality ceramics and goldsmiths.
The Phoenicians not only exerted a great influence on the gymnast territory, but the latter, acting as a border between the Greek and Phoenician areas of influence, also received notable Greek influences. In this way, the inhabitants of the Huerta de Alicante benefited from trade with both, and in turn, acted as intermediaries with the populations of the interior.
This intense trade involved the adoption of new technologies and new cultural features. The alphabet, the monetary system, the use of the lathe or the adoption of new religious rites, are part of these advances that ended up shaping what today we know as Iberian culture.
The most significant deposit we have in the Huerta de Alicante, was again found in the Cerro de las Balsas. From the excavations carried out in the Albufereta, led by the research team COPHIAM, the presence of an oppidum (walled Iberian settlement) with rectangular dwellings attached to the wall at the rear, and a central street giving access to them. In the area outside the walls the presence of an industrial area, access roads to the town and a necropolis could be verified.
Another site of great importance, also belonging to this period, is the necropolis of the Albufereta. It was excavated by Francisco Figueras Pacheco between 1934 and 1936 and, although these campaigns were paralyzed by the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, they provided numerous materials and information. In the rest of the Alicante orchard, numerous structures and archaeological remains have also been found, albeit sparsely. All of this has enabled researchers today to learn about and rebuild the way of life, the economy, the rites and beliefs or the relationships they had with other peoples.
Rome and Carthage in the garden of Alicante
Later in the century III B.C. the political situation between the two major powers of the Western Mediterranean directly affected the Alicante coast. The Carthaginian family of the Barca began a series of campaigns in Iberia with the aim of recovering from the loss of power and prestige suffered by Carthage after the First Punic War, but as the Carthaginian army was annexing more towns and territories, the tension between Rome and Carthage grew exponentially.
In this pre-war context it will be when the Punic fort of Tossal de Manises is built. This site is named because of the large amount of ceramic material or manises that appeared in it and, although it was widely known that on that promontory appeared objects and carved stones, it was popularly attributed to “times of the Moors” or the city of Akra Leuka, where Hannibal sheltered the Carthaginian army during the winter of 228 B.C.
The foundation of this fort coincided with the collapse of the Iberian oppidum of the Tossal de les Bases and the abandonment of the iron quarries that emerged between Busot and Aigües.
The interventions carried out, both by Figueras Pacheco and La Fuente Vidal and those carried out by the group of MARQrevealed the presence of numerous defensive structures, warehouses and reservoirs characteristic of the Punic world, which were destroyed at the end of S. III B.C., coinciding with the arrival of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus in Hispania and the conquest of Carthage Nova in 209 B.C.
From this date, these lands were incorporated into the Roman state, but no significant changes were recorded until 83 B.C. with the beginning of the so-called Sertorian Wars. Alicante, acting as a place of border between the legions of Sertorio and those of Pompeyo acquired great strategic importance and the latter decided to rehabilitate the old fort of Tossal de Manises to end piracy and act as a base of operations.
With Augustus coming to power, Lucentum acquired the status of Roman municipium and, although it had the smallest forum of the entire Empire, it had all those characteristic elements that should contain a Roman city and controlled a ager (territory) that reached the current Foia de Castalla.
The romanization of the territory was a slow process, but Roman governmental, administrative and religious institutions were eventually adopted. Pax Augusta was also a period of economic boom, which had its archaeological reflection in the imposing villas that were built throughout the Huerta de Alicante and whose pars rustica was destined to the agricultural holding while its urban pars dispensed all those comforts that the dominus (lord or owner) needed.
The villas of the Nations Park, the street of the Almadraba, the Camino de la Colonia Romana or the Avenida Conrado Albadalejo, are just one example of these luxurious homes, which had arcaded courtyards, mosaics, gardens and even some had heating, running water, baths and natatio (swimming pool).
Logically, not all the Alicante garden was occupied by these villas, but it would also be dotted with domus (house or dwelling) of small and medium owners, manufactured with more modest materials and, therefore, more difficult to locate.
The production of the prized garum (sauce made with fish casings and aromatic plants), salted products, wine, oil and esparto were the products most in demand by the international markets and that granted considerable benefits to the local oligarchs.
The Lucentum crisis began in the late s. I A.D. with the end of the housing bubble promoted by the Julius-Claudius and concluded by the Flavian dynasty. On the other hand, the proximity of the Colonia Iulia Ilici Augusta (Elche) or the emergence of other populations, such as Allon (Villajoyosa), left Lucentum in a compromised position that was unable to compete with them. During S. III A.D. the city is completely abandoned, numerous villas are also abandoned and the city becomes a quarry for the surrounding buildings.
In Sant Joan d’Alacant, although archaeological remains of these villas or peri-urban domus have not yet been found, we know that the Via Dianium -an extension of the Via Augusta that united the populations of the coast from Saetabis or Játiva to Elche- had to cross the current municipal term, also located in the current church of San Juan Bautista the tombstone of Macronus, a Roman child who died at 13 years of age and the location of a statue with Roman robe.
As if this were not enough, the finding of numerous Roman deposits in the municipality of Mutxamel such as: ochre mines, irrigation ponds, a water pipeline and numerous ceramic material, indicate that the total of the orchard was populated and exploited.
Tossal de Manises Archaeological Park (Albufereta, Alicante). MARQ Archive
The Byzantine and Visigoth occupation
The year 476 A.D. was simply the culmination of a long and decadent process. The old late Roman civil, military and ecclesiastical authorities, together with the “barbarian” nobility, led to the emergence of a new elite that ruled the kingdoms that emerged in Europe after the dismemberment of the Western Roman Empire.
The newly created Visigoth Kingdom had to deal with the migrations of other peoples, the loss of territories in favor of the Franks and above all with internal clashes between its nobility for taking power. In this context, Justinian tried to reconquer the Iberian Peninsula, but were defeated and relegated to the coastal cities of the peninsular Southeast. The province of Spaniae was established in 552 A.D. and included the Alicante lands, which acted as a border between the Visigoth kingdom and the Byzantine Empire, but in 624, unable to maintain the territory, they left Hispania.
Although there was no urban settlement, the latest research indicates that the rural settlement of the Huerta de Alicante was concentrated in small and medium scattered centers: villages, vicus or religious centers that were controlled by a castellum (military camp or castle) located on Mount Benacantil.
The imposing necropolis of Tossal de les Basses, with more than eight hundred late ancient burials, reinforce the presence of an important Christian rural community that chose this place to be buried due to the presence of a basilica or religious center of importance.
The medieval Andalusian period
The rapid Muslim conquest of Hispania, which began in 711 at the hands of Tariq ibn Ziyad, was due to the beheading of the royal power; after the death of Don Rodrigo in the battle of Guadalete, the division of the Gothic nobility and the pactist policy practiced by the Muslim generals.
The Tudmir Pact or Teodomiro is a document of exceptional importance since it describes the treaty of vassalage signed by Teodomiro, lord among other cities of Laqant, Uryula and Ello with Abd al-Aziz second valí (governor) of Al-Ándalus. It ensured that cities, goods and religious beliefs would be respected in exchange for annual tribute and military assistance in case of need.
Therefore, after the signing of the treaty, we have to think that the population of the Huerta de Alicante was respected, but the new political landscape attracted populations from North Africa and the Middle East, which would initiate a slow but continuous process of acculturation. This process was favoured by the local elites, who became related to foreign elites, adopting the Islamic faith to the detriment of the Christian one. Also, the economic factor was very important because, Christians had to pay a special tax for continuing to profess their religion, while Muslims did not, which led to conversion.
The model of small villages or scattered farmhouses, which would occupy the entire Huerta de Alicante and, which would be controlled and protected by the hins of Laqant located in the Benacantil, is strengthened by archaeological remains, written sources and toponymy. Lloixa, Benimagrell, Tangel and Mutxamel are names that have endured to this day and, although Sant Joan did not keep his Arabic name, we know that it was that of Benalí (Son of Alí). In these farmhouses it was produced: wheat, barley, products derived from the vine; such as vinegar, raisin or grape juice and also almonds, carob, figs, olive oil and honey.
Archeology, again, shows us a great concentration of tombs of Islamic period, dated between the S. VIII and X, in the Tossal of Manises. In Sant Joan, a burial of this era was also located between the C/ Dr. Marañón with the C/ del Carmen and numerous material in the surroundings of Benimagrell. All this suggests that rural communities were very important, especially in agricultural production, necessary to supply the nascent medina of Laqant.
Although the Christian occupation represented a transcendental political, economic and cultural change, the importance of the rural nuclei of the Huerta de Alicante, such as that of Sant Joan, took on greater importance, since, its production was exported and recognized throughout Europe in later centuries, as the renowned wine Fondillón.
