The Sant Agustí Vell Archaeological Project has begun a new five-year project that has been presented today, December 20, in the same Talayotic settlement of Sant Agustí, Es Migjorn Gran.
Project co-directors Montserrat Anglada and Damià Ramis detailed the progress of this first campaign, which was carried out during the months of November and December. The work has focused on finishing the excavation of the room attached to the South Building of Talayot 1, known as the
Talayot of Ses Bigues de Mata because it preserves the wild olive tree beams that are more than 3,000 years old.
The event was attended by the conseller for Cultural Affairs, Joan Pons Torres; the director of the Talayotic Menorca Agency, Antoni Ferrer Rotger; the city councillor for Cultural Affairs of the Es Migjorn Gran Town Council, Tamara Rotger; and a representative of the ASMAR-Catalina Mercadal Foundation.
Sant Agustí Vell is one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites, located in Component 4 of the Talayotic settlements in the Migjorn ravine area of the island.
In the current situation of the project, we can drawn some conclusions:
- The space around the South Building underwent a late occupation during the Iron Age, which lasted until approximately 300 BC, according to the typology of the imported ceramics recovered both in the access corridor to the talayot and in the demolition levels of the exterior room that adjoins the façade of the South Building.
- The character of this occupation is clearly domestic, according to the materials recovered. The building's corridor gave access to the interior of the talayot, although its function cannot yet be precisely defined. Given the large number of amphora fragments found, mainly from Ibiza, it is possible that it was used as a dunghill once its original function had been depreciated. The other hypothesis is that the remains discovered came from inside the talayot or from the other rooms of the building, where possible storage areas could have been located.
- On the other hand, different fragments of molones have been recovered, as well as a stone mortar, which together with the quantity of cereal seeds recovered during the sieving of the sediment from the excavation, may lead us to think of a work related to the processing of these seeds to transform them into food, perhaps a communal work.
- These studies will provide new data that will help us to better understand what the human communities that inhabited the Sant Agustí settlement at the end of the Talayotic period were like.
The excavation of these areas of the building, the access corridor to the talayot and the interior room is revealing its majesty with architectural structures of great monumentality. The façade is impressive, with a height of more than 3 metres, and in the middle of it there is a central portico that still has part of its roof. This entrance is advanced with respect to the façade line with a porch-like construction, which is an architectural solution that is not very well known until now in Balearic prehistory.
Within the framework of the five-year project, the intention is to continue excavating the exteriors to delimit the South Building, as well as its interior, which could conserve part of the slab roof, and to carry out conservation work.
The excavation has been carried out by the Asociación Arqueología y Patrimonio under the direction of Damià Ramis, Montserrat Anglada and Ismael Moll Pelegrí, with the financial support of the Consell Insular de Menorca, the Es Migjorn Gran Town Council, the Fundación ASMAR-Catalina Mercadal and the logistical support of the Museu de Menorca.