A large collection of pottery recovered from the Roman city of Mellaria is providing archaeologists with new clues about the settlement’s economy and daily life.
The material comes from excavations carried out at Cerro de Masatrigo in 2022 and 2023 as part of the University of Córdoba’s Ager Mellariensis project. Researchers studied 8,839 ceramic fragments, many of them broken pieces of vessels once used for cooking, storage and trade.
Mellaria stood near present-day Fuente Obejuna in an area known for its mineral resources. The town has long been linked to mining, but the recent excavations have revealed more than evidence of industrial activity. Archaeologists uncovered remains connected to the city’s water supply and road system, allowing them to reconstruct parts of the urban landscape for the first time.
“The work reviews the excavations carried out in the area of Cerro de Masatrigo that offer, for the first time, a concrete view of the hydraulic system of Mellaria and the urban planning of this Roman municipality linked to the mining exploitation of the northwest of Cordoba,” the authors write.
The pottery itself tells a story of movement and exchange. Some vessels originated in Italy, Gaul and North Africa, while others were produced much closer to home in workshops at Andújar and Córdoba. Their presence at Mellaria suggests merchants, traders and transport networks regularly connected the town with other parts of Roman Hispania.
Not all of the finds belong to the same period. Earlier deposits contain larger quantities of imported wares, reflecting a time when the settlement appears to have enjoyed considerable prosperity. Later layers paint a different picture. Imported goods become less common and the archaeological record hints at gradual economic change rather than sudden decline.
Comparisons with material from nearby Sisapo revealed striking similarities. Both settlements appear to have drawn on the same commercial routes and both owed much of their development to the mining districts of the Sierra Morena. The shared patterns seen in the pottery suggest that the fortunes of the two communities were closely intertwined.
For archaeologists, the value of the study extends beyond the pottery itself. The excavations are beginning to reveal how Mellaria functioned as a town: how water was supplied, how goods arrived and circulated, and how a mining settlement became part of a much larger economic system stretching across Roman Spain.
The findings have been published in Circulation of Ceramic Production on the Slopes of Sierra Morena in Roman Times: Contexts and Materials, a volume dedicated to archaeologist Carmen Fernández Ochoa.
Header Image Credit : University of Cordoba
Sources : https://doi.org/10.5944/monografias.prehistoria.arqueologia.2026.1.10
