Bestigium / Mérida
Roman road · 1 layer

Vía de la Plata: Pa La Charca stretch

A stretch of the Vía de la Plata (Iter ab Emerita Asturicam), the Roman road that linked Augusta Emerita (Mérida) with Asturica Augusta (Astorga). The popular name «Pa La Charca» (towards the pond) refers to a nearby watering place that served as a local landmark for this stretch, north of Mérida in the municipality of Mirandilla. The road, built during the Roman Empire — with milestones documented from the 1st century AD — kept a width of about 6.5 metres and used granite kerbs over layers of sand, gravel and compacted stone. This stretch holds the group of milestones of mile VI of the iter, the first numerically significant group on the road out of Emerita. The stretch was the subject of archaeological work (Vía de la Plata II Project in Extremadura, 2010), with excavation, recording and presentation, including a wooden walkway installed to protect the Roman surface. A few kilometres north, at Mirandilla, the remains of the Roman bridge over the river Aljucén were also recovered. The Vía de la Plata has been listed as a historic site since 1997. (Location approximate.)

Type
Roman road
Preservation
Foundations
Protection
Coordinates
38.98784, -6.32088
Photographs
0
The section

What each period left here

It reads downwards: each band is a period with fabric in this site, newest first, deepest last.

25 BC – 5th c. Level 1
0 facts
0 photographs
Roman

Roman

This site has fabric from this period. Mérida has 57 more sites built in the same layer.

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Bottom of the section

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.

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