Between March and July 2011, thanks to the grant of the Generalitat Valenciana included in the Plan Confianza, the Proyecto La Alcudia, Casas ibéricas, 4C Sector was carried out. From September to December of that same year, a respite was requested to finish the consolidation, restoration works and its later musealisation. The excavation from 2011 needed the traditional stratigraphic reading and showed new interpretative guidelines, analysing a stratigraphic ensemble dating from the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC until the Islamic period.

The initial objectives of this excavation were, on the one hand, to proceed to a definitive cleaning of the sector for it to be able to extend towards the southern part of the Casas Ibéricas sector and the consolidation of a wide adjacent space in which archaeological remains were unearthed during the 60s and 70s of the 20th century; on the other hand, to excavate with the purpose of establishing a new stratigraphic reading for this quadrant of the site, using an adapted work method from Harris-Baker, and attempting a posteriori comparing the results with the ones already published by A. Ramos Folqués and R. Ramos Fernández. Lastly, provided that the intervention is carried out within an archaeological site open to the public, we wanted to the establish some explicative premises that covered the field works, along with a security programme, and after the works, the musealisation of the whole sector.

Sector 4C, known as “Sector de las Casas Ibéricas”, is located in the north-western angle of the space traditionally restricted as archaeological area. The works have been carried out in a rectangular space of 250 m2 that expands towards the south of the previously excavated stretch. It was projected as a wide trench from the east-west street that limited south with the old excavations. A maximum depth of 2.5 m was reached, but the excavation finished without having got to the fully sterile levels, which is why the sequence is probably wider and deeper.

In the sectors where we reached the lower levels, the contexts were composed of fine textured orange, greenish and greyish-coloured clay, identified as adobes and dissolved rammed earth, forming compact archaeological units related to two construction phases. These phases are identified by various walls, that form approximately four rooms and are associated with a continuous bank or, what we believe is more probable, a more ancient construction phase. These 0.6 m wide walls, composeof irregular stones, must have been the plinths of a house ensemble that occupied a bigger space.

In these Iberian levels the archaeological material is very scarce; therefore it is very complicated to offer a closed chronology, as there are only a few ceramic fragments with an undefined shape and some others painted with strips and other decorations. Over these levels we found a connection which narrows down the possible stratigraphic sequence that would overlap these Iberian levels. Apart from horizontally sectioning these archaeological units, that connection, which has a constructive origin, sections the trench with Augustan materials. At some imprecise point in the 1st century BC, a thermal complex was built. For that, the ground level was stabilised, providing a horizontal level which provided the base for the perimeter wall. This thermal ensemble, of which we only know the caldarium, must have had various constructive phases and readaptations over time. In the 5th century AD, as a result of an intense building effort detected in some sectors of the excavation, the building was transformed and suffered an important plundering of those structures, which were unnecessary for the new occupation.

From the 6th century, the space was filled and levelled with clay-like orange-and-brown-coloured earth. Then, the existent space was transformed maintaining the use of the ancient Roman walls, now combined with new structures that form a completely different area of occupation.

Over the 6th century levels are found new contexts dating from the 7th century, and even constructions lying over levels of use closer to the 8th century.. All these data confirm the presence of a habitat, at least during the 8th century, in the northwestern sector of La Alcudia. It had previously been assumed that the city was abandoned at the moment of the Arab conquest. However,, the existence of a burial in a lateral decubitus position seems to indicate the frequentation of the space, even if it was only as a burial ground, in centuries of the Islamic period.

(translation by Andrea Jorde Pérez)