Proserpina quarry 1
A Roman granite quarry near the Proserpina reservoir, some 6 km north of Mérida (Augusta Emerita). It is one of the working faces identified around the old Roman colony that supplied stone for its great monuments.
- Type
- Mine/Quarry
- Preservation
- —
- Protection
- Inventoried · Nivel B
- Coordinates
- 38.97089, -6.36785
- Photographs
- 0
What it is and what is left
The granite quarried here, a «light grey two-mica» granite with megacrysts of potassium feldspar, was used in the public buildings of Augusta Emerita. Archaeological and archaeometric research led by Antonio Pizzo (CSIC-IAM) has identified several quarries around the Proserpina reservoir: slots for inserting wedges survive on the working faces, along with masons' marks similar to those recorded on the Roman bridge over the Guadiana.
The working area covers roughly 40 km² north of the city and was active during the founding period of the colony (1st century BC – 1st century AD). The quarries near Proserpina, such as Finca Los Baldíos (about 1.5 km to the west) and Finca Cuarto de la Charca, have been linked by optical microscopy and X-ray fluorescence analysis to the building phases of the Roman theatre and amphitheatre, declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993.
What each period left here
It reads downwards: each band is a period with fabric in this site, newest first, deepest last.
0 facts
0 photographs
Roman
This site has fabric from this period. Mérida has 57 more sites built in the same layer.
See the whole layer →Below the deepest layer of each site is the ground itself: what has not been excavated yet, or what left nothing built. The catalogue only claims what is documented.
A short walk from here
Straight-line distances, worked out from the coordinates of each site.