Herrera de Pisuerga site

Description

The origins of the archaeological site of Herrera de Pisuerga date back to the 1st century BC, when a military settlement was founded (Pérez, 1996). According to Arribas and Pérez (2018), the necropolis was located between the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de la Piedad, the old livestock market and the San Pedro neighborhood. The site was discovered accidentally at the beginning of the 20th century during the construction of several irrigation orchards next to the Burejo River. It was not until 1931-1932 when the area was excavated by Martínez Santa-Olalla, who later (1933) published a report of the work undertaken. This investigation was of great importance, since it was one of the first to classify a Visigoth necropolis. A total of 52 burials were found (Fernández, 2020), of which 16 contained grave goods dated between the VI-VII centuries. Many pieces of the burials were looted after 1908. Zeiss (1934) cites three fibulae, three liriform plaques, a cruciform plaque and another with a scene of Daniel in the lions' den (Ripoll, 1986). However, Martínez Santa-Olalla (1933) affirmed that there were many more pieces: "In those thirty years the quantity of objects -almost two sacks-, that left there, to be lost almost all of them mis-sold by shamans, has been enormous". The pieces were soon dispersed: some were in the hands of the antiquarian Evencio López, in Burgos (Zeiss, 1934); others ended up in the collection of Simón Nieto (Palencia), who bequeathed his goods to the National Archaeological Museum (Fernández, 2021); they were also present in the collection of Gustav Steffens, in Cologne (Zeiss, 1934) and in that of Henry Walters (Baltimore).

Bibliography

• ARRIBAS LOBO, Pablo y PÉREZ GONZÁLEZ, Cesáreo (2018): "La necrópolis tardoantigua de Herrera de Pisuerga (Palencia). Intervención arqueológica en C/ Victorio Macho", nº 14, Oppidum: cuadernos de investigación, pp. 295-326.
• FERNÁNDEZ SUÁREZ, María Edén (2020): "Enterramientos infantiles en la necrópolis tardoantigua de Herrera de Pisuerga (Palencia)", nº 16, Oppidum: cuadernos de investigación, pp. 183-198.
• FERNÁNDEZ, Jorge Juan (2021): "En torno a Eras del Bosque (Palencia) y las piezas de arnés procedentes de la necrópolis romana", nº 17, Oppidum. Cuadernos de investigación, pp. 61-76.
• MARTÍNEZ SANTA-OLALLA, Julio (1933): "Excavaciones en la necrópolis visigoda de Herrera de Pisuerga", nº 125, Junta Superior de Investigaciones y Antigüedades.
• RIPOLL, Gisela (1986): La ocupación visigoda en época romana a través de sus necrópolis (Hispania), Universidad de Barcelona, Barcelona, p. 437.
• ZEISS, Hans (1934): Die Grabfunde aus dem spanischen Westgotenreich, vol. 2, en Germanische Denkmäler der Völkerwanderungszeit, De Gruyter, Berlín, p. 149.