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  • Ermita de la Vera Cruz
  • Frandovínez
  • Ermita de la Vera Cruz
  • Spain
  • Castille and León
  • Burgos
  • Frandovínez

Credits

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Periods

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Chronology

  • 3300 BC - 2400 BC
  • 1788 AD - 1850 AD

Season

    • This is a small building with a rectangular base, 19 meters long and 6 meters wide, located on the western edge of the village of Frandovínez. Built between the second half of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century, in the 19th century it lost its religious function and was then used as an auxiliary agricultural installation. The only remains standing consist of little more than one meter of rough masonry limestone wall stumps. The archaeological excavation carried out on the entire foundation allowed us to document four different kinds of evidence. On one hand, we established the presence of a Chalcolithic habitat configured as a “field of holes” altered by historical structures; there were six silos internally covered with a layer of mud cape which provided abundant shards (98 kg and 3148 pieces), lithic material (372 pieces), animal bone remains (21 kg, 18.5 of which come from one single structure) and two bone burins. Its relative chronology is between 3300 and 2400 cal BC, within the regional pattern. The second set of evidence corresponds to the structures of a bell foundry dated to 1788, all of whose structural components have been exhumed: a mould and smelting trench, a furnace for exterior smelting, a furnace for interior smelting, bell casts and other auxiliary structures. Some information is available from the historical documentation specified in the Manufacture Book of the parish church, as well as the date from a book entry coinciding with the archaeological material record and the stratigraphic sequence. In contrast to the information provided by the historical record, identifying the casting of two bells, three were finally manufactured in an attempt to make good use of the complex structures which changed the internal aspect of the religious building. It is an exceptional case since it has been fully documented, allowing us to reconstruct from an archaeological approach a process that had traditionally been kept secret among bell founders since the Late Middle Ages. Finally, the interior was a temporary burial place in the early nineteenth century; it was also used to hide grain, with a big silo, found empty and with its opening closed by a large slab; the silo is related to the great impact of the French occupation during the Peninsular War.

Bibliography

    • Alonso Fernández, C. (2014): ”Campanas y campaneros: el taller de fundición del siglo XVIII de la ermita de Vera Cruz de Frandovínez (Burgos)”, Hispania Sacra, LXVI, Extra I, pp. 265-296.