Images of the destruction at Iruña-Veleia

A member of SOS Iruña-Veleia, just stopped by Leherensuge (see comments in previous post) to comment that the destruction is terrible:

I was there yesterday and it is horrendous what they are doing. They remove the earth with a big excavator - not just removing the top layer affected by agriculture - till the appearance of Roman structures, up to more than one meter deep. I could clearly distinguish the destruction of structures and otherwise archaeological layers.

He also mentioned that there are now many photos at their site documenting the archaeological atrocity perpetrated by Prof. Núñez.




Above just a couple of examples of how not to do an archaeological dig... unless your intention is merely to destroy everything, to erase the archaeological evidence in that site.

The excavator has dug much deeper than the 50 cm allowed by the director (even if the agricultural layer is just 20-30 cm deep), removing a lot of potentially informative material, destroying the stratigraphy and even in some cases reaching to the base rock, that is: destroying the whole stratigraphic sequence.

This has no name. This is a crime against history for mere particular (and I suspect ideological) interests.

I am not sure of what can we do but I imagine that a good idea is to send emails of protest to the Provincial Government of Araba (Álava) in charge of the site and the dig expressing your outrage in the hope that they react to public pressure and forbid these "methods" altogether.

Relevant email addresses are:

Provincial Government (Arabako Foru Aldundia - Diputación Foral de Álava):

dfa@alava.net

Museums - Service of Historical-Artistic and Archaeological Patrimony

patrimoniohaa@alava.net