The UB carries out archaeological excavations in Olèrdola, within a project to study Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
The University of Barcelona (UB) and the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia have set up an archaeological campaign in Olèrdola (Barcelona). The town was abandoned in the 12th century after an Almoravid attack, so it preserves the features that characterised towns in the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Excavations are centred on the neighbourhood Pla del Abats, located outside the walls, around the church of Santa Maria, and particularly in the area of the graveyard and the orchard. Olèrdola excavations are part of a project that studies religious architecture between the 4th and the 10th centuries and the interaction Church-society during the transition from the Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
The University of Barcelona (UB) and the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia have set up an archaeological campaign in Olèrdola (Barcelona). The town was abandoned in the 12th century after an Almoravid attack, so it preserves the features that characterised towns in the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Excavations are centred on the neighbourhood Pla del Abats, located outside the walls, around the church of Santa Maria, and particularly in the area of the graveyard and the orchard. Olèrdola excavations are part of a project that studies religious architecture between the 4th and the 10th centuries and the interaction Church-society during the transition from the Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
The research programme set up in Olèrdola will tie the town outside the walls to the town inside them. The excavations of graves and subsequent anthropological studies will provide key data to know how was the population that inhabited the slum and compared it the people who live inside the walls of the city. At the same time, researchers will analyse topographical documents about every structural element concerning medieval urban planning. This will allow knowing how the medieval city outside and inside the walls was. TheCatalan Agency of Cultural Heritage and the Town Council support the project and will adapt the site of Pla dels Abats to be visited.
Excavations are part of the project Ecclesiae, coemeteria et loci (saec. VIII-XI). Sancti Cirici de Colera, Sidilianum, Olerdola / Esglésies, cementiris i hàbitats (segles VIII al XI). Sant Quirze de Colera, Sidillà, Olèrdola (ECLOC), funded by the Government of Catalonia, developed by the UB and supervised by Gisela Ripoll within the studies carried out by the Research Group of Archaeology and Archaeometry of the UB (ERAAUB). Besides, Olèrdola works are included in the European project CARE and in a national plan of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (L'impacte de lʼarquitectura religiosa en el paisatge urbà i rural del nord-est dʼHispània i les illes Balears). All these projects are focused on the period between the 4th and the 10th centuries and they study urban and rural landscapes considering the church, the habitat and the graveyard. These studies understand landscape as a dynamic and complex element at permanent change.