Spain
Las Herrizas

Location and historical summary

The Las Herrizas site overlooks the Río Barbate reservoir in the south of the municipality of Alcalá de los Gazules in Cádiz. Due to its difficult access, it remained almost totally unknown until the project was launched in 2024. It was soon compared with the Bailo oppidum (La Silla del Papa, Tarifa), which is located 30 km further south on the Strait of Gibraltar coast. In both cases, settlement was organised around a linear outcrop of soft rock, with a semi-rupestrian habitat anchored to it. Secondly, both settlements reached their apogee during the Republican period (2nd and 1st centuries BC) and were abandoned during the Augustan era. With a surface area of no more than one and a half hectares, Las Herrizas was a secondary settlement that most likely belonged to the territory of the city of Lascuta. A third similarity is that Lascuta, like Bailo, was part of a small group of cities that minted “Libyan-Phoenician” coins with bilingual Latin and Neo-Punic legends during the Republican period.

History of research

The Las Herrizas site was discovered by a Swiss traveller in the late 1950s, after which it fell into oblivion for over half a century. Pedestrian surveys carried out in October 2024 confirmed the site’s potential when a rich ceramic assemblage (fine ceramics and amphorae) was discovered. This material enabled us to establish the first chronological milestones of the site’s occupation, spanning from the 1st Iron Age to the Augustan period. A second operation involving geophysical prospecting was carried out in June 2025.