Rojaneros quarry
A Roman granite quarry some 6.4 km north-west of Mérida (Augusta Emerita), close to the Vía de la Plata (Iter ab Emerita Caesaraugustam). Also known as Finca Royanejos, it is the largest of the quarries recorded around Mérida and was one of the main sources of stone for building the great monuments of the Roman colony.
- Type
- Mine/Quarry
- Preservation
- —
- Protection
- Inventoried · Nivel B
- Coordinates
- 38.97454, -6.33657
- Photographs
- 0
What it is and what is left
Archaeological research (Pizzo, 2011; Pizzo et al., 2018) has identified quarrying marks here identical to those recorded on the floor of the Roman reservoir of Proserpina, which confirms extraction directly tied to the public works of Augusta Emerita. The two-mica granite quarried here went above all to the central closing of the cavea of the Roman theatre and to the western parts of the scaena, as well as to passage structures in the amphitheatre.
Beside the quarry are structures belonging to the villa of Royanejos (3rd–4th centuries AD), with rectangular rooms, a pool in opus caementicium and apsidal plans, showing that the place carried on into the late Roman period. The quarry's proximity to the villa cut transport times for building material significantly.
(Location approximate.)
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.
Where this page comes from
- Ficha en Vici.org vici.org
- Pizzo, A. (2011): Las canteras de granito de Augusta Emerita — Dialnet dialnet.unirioja.es