Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño is today the only town with bastioned walls of Phoenician origin in the Iberian Peninsula.
Several graduates and Master of Archaeology students at the University of Alicante and the University of Murcia, along with some volunteers from Guardamar del Segura and Torrevieja have participated in the campaign of archaeological excavations being carried out at the Phoenician site Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño during the month of June of this year. The promoter of this work is the City of Guardamar, who also also subsidizes the expenses of the archaeological work. The archaeological works are part of a joint project between the University of Alicante and the Archaeological Museum of Guardamar, MAG, under the direction of Professor Fernando Prados Martínez, University of Alicante and Antonio Garcia Menarguez, Director of MAG. Archaeological activities have been taking place since June 6, and have the authorization of the Directorate General of Culture and Heritage of the Ministry of Education, Research, Culture and Sport, and the Generalitat Valenciana.
In this first phase, archaeologists are excavating in order to be able to document and date the different restructurings which have developed at the site as a result of some contemporary earthquakes to the walled core, which affected a number of public spaces and urban structures attached to the wall bastions on the western slope within the reservoir called Sector 2; causing possibly the transfer of population to La Fonteta, the other Phoenician site located on the south bank of the mouth of the River Segura.
The archaeological work will resume in the coming autumn months and the subsequently uncovered archaeological remains will undergo a consolidation project and architectural restoration, in order to preserve the site ahead of its subsequent evaluation as a cultural tourism product.
Do not forget that the Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño is today the only town with bastioned walls of Phoenician origin in the Iberian Peninsula, with a chronology that dates back to the first third of the eighth century BC, in the archaic phase of Phoenician colonization in Spain.
Regards,
Pete
