{"id":610,"date":"2016-03-18T12:06:52","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T11:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/romanarmy.eu\/?p=610"},"modified":"2016-03-18T12:06:52","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T11:06:52","slug":"unha-paisaxe-arqueoloxica-asolagada-aquae-querquennae-bande-ourense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/romanarmy.eu\/en\/2016\/03\/18\/unha-paisaxe-arqueoloxica-asolagada-aquae-querquennae-bande-ourense\/","title":{"rendered":"A flooded archaeological landscape: Aquae Querquennae (Bande, Ourense)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"port\"<\/a><\/p>\n

5 June 1921. Spain\u00a0attends with some somnolence to the escalation of violence that will lead to the famous colonial\u00a0disaster of Annual<\/a>. As expected, this situation resonates like a more distant echo in rural Galicia, where the only revolution are the sporadic but typical downpours of the last days of spring. However, the peaceful place of “A Cibdade”<\/em>, located on the north bank of the Limia River, receives a rare visit.\u00a0This time, not only the inhabitants of the close villages of Portoquintela and Ba\u00f1os de Bande come to dig the land, but also four particularly well-dressed figures are approaching. They are Ram\u00f3n Otero Pedrayo, Florentino L\u00f3pez Cuevillas and Vicente Risco, prominent Galicianist <\/a>intellectuals from the capital city of Ourese. The fouth well-known person is Farruco Pena, a local lawyer.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Miembros<\/a>
Members of the Seminario de Estudos Galegos in 1928, inside the Ruins of\u00a0San Domingos de Pontevedra. From left to right: R. Otero Pedrayo, F. L\u00f3pez Cuevillas and V. Risco. Source: Fundaci\u00f3n Otero Pedrayo<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bad weather does not make them desist from their efforts and, at the end of the day, the trench opened by the locals has uncovered a well bonded wall and some pottery remains. Apparently, this is something usual in this place and just what the intellectuals were looking for. The volume\u00a05 of the Galicianist journal N\u00f3s<\/a>\u00a0shows an\u00a0accurate deduction: those were the\u00a0remains of the\u00a0mansio “Aquis Querquennis”<\/em> referred by the Antonine Itinerary.<\/p>\n

\"Art\u00edculo<\/a>
Paper of L\u00f3pez Cuevillas in the volume\u00a09 of the journal N\u00f3s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A new visit just a few months later (10\/09\/1921) will even improve these optimistic expectations. The opening a larger trench will allow the discovery of an imposing wall. The great area in which archaeological features were documented makes\u00a0Cuevillas state\u00a0that they were facing the ruins of a\u00a0“Roman or Celtic-Roman” city<\/a>. Since then, the site became part of the usual scholarly catalogs of those time. Even the place was included on the “tour” the Provincial Commission of Historical and Artistic Monuments of Orense<\/em> made to this area in 1935.<\/p>\n

\"Construcci\u00f3n<\/a>
Construction of the dam of As Conchas (1945). It is said that a worked was buried alive by concrete. Photographies taken from this website<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, new archaeological interventions will not take place here\u00a0during the 1930s. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) difficulted any\u00a0action\u00a0in this regard. Sin embargo, no se producir\u00e1n nuevas intervenciones arqueol\u00f3gicas durante estos a\u00f1os. On one hand, after the war the Galician intellectual elites were dismantled; on the other, we assisted to a new scenario in which different policies<\/a>\u00a0and needs overcame the cultural, ecological or heritage interests. As it happened in many other locations in Spain<\/a>, the Franco regime studied to build a dam in As Conchas. That implied the waterlogging of much of the Limia River valley .<\/p>\n

\"inaug\"<\/a>
Inauguration of the dam by\u00a0F. Franco en 1949 (left<\/a>). The dam and the barracks of the Village of As Conchas in 1957 (right<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By 1948 the village of Ba\u00f1os de Bande was already under water. Its inhabitants were relocated to temporary facilities and a stream of expropriations, land deals and parcellings was still shaking the region. The reviewing\u00a0of the A (1945-1946) and B (1956-1957) Series of the “American Flight” allows us to check the physical magnitude of these changes. Nevertheless,\u00a0only only the pysical space was altered: from dask to dawn the sociocultural\u00a0dynamics<\/a> of severalrural communities were dynamited.<\/p>\n