Villa rome fountain of Saint Peter of Villafáfila

What was the Villa de la Fuente de San Pedro like? We can not conjecture anything , unless we base ourselves on the data provided by other discoveries of the same type . or in the Duero basin .

We only know of her the remains of her mosaics found in the Provincial Museum of Archeology and Fine Arts of Zamora .

In 1982, on the occasion of the tillage of a cereal cultivation land , by D. Francisco Martínez de Castro "El Rubio" in the vicinity of the Fuente de San Pedro , mosaic remains were discovered, belonging to the town.

Could it be that this fountain belonged to the supposed village that was located there?

It is located approx. from Villafáfila at 4.20 km, in the payment of San Pedro, which takes its name from the Roman Fountain of San Pedro that is in its vicinity approx. at about 260 m.

The place of location corresponds to the Villafáfila plot concentration map, polygon 12, farm 1132.

On the farm, in the area approx. of Villa de San Pedro there are two heaps of large stones grouped in their day by the owner.

Next to Villa de San Pedro ran a Roman road [1] of second order that was connected to each other with the Roman Bridge of Villarigo and the Fountain of San Pedro and that goes:

It joined the valleys of the Esla de Petavonium or Brigaecium (Benavente) passing in the direction of the Roman Bridge of Villarigo, saving the Villafáfila lagoons, it communicated with the settlement of the late Roman town of the Fuente de San Pedro and with the Fuente de San Pedro itself. until you get to connect with the Duero in (Albocela-Toro).

This road was later a Vereda, the so-called Vereda de Benavente a Toro. Centuries later, in 1129, "et to enter the bull's race" is cited in the delimitation of the alfoz de Castrotorafe, granted by Emperor Alfonso VII of Castile.

The influence that this secondary Roman road has had on the transhumance of sheep since the Middle Ages through the Plateau (Vereda de Benavente a Toro and Medina de Campo) should be highlighted, joining the Vía de la Plata or Vizana with the western Cañada Leonesa, which ran through the last of the indicated localities.

It is a mosaic with geometric figures, with Byzantine influence and a textile appearance, very common and widespread in the Hispanic Bajorromanidad .

This mosaic presents two different schemes of geometric drawings, polychrome and bordered on the outside by a common border for both.

Its component materials are black and white marble and terracotta in yellow and brick red . _ _

Its quality suggests a certain sumptuousness in the paved outbuilding . Terracotta may correspond to local materials .

a) Surface made up of one square centimeter tesserae in different areas, sometimes white pieces and other times with red and black ones, the latter in greater number.

c) Two-strand rope. Inside: linear composition of swastikas, made in a two-strand braid and joined to squares, very common in Roman art .

Internally: isotropic surface composed of intersecting circles that define quatrefoils and curvilinear squares.

These have centered polychrome rhombuses with a central cross in some and flowers in others with four and six folios, those with fusiform and cruciform elements , quadripetals , irregular checkerboard shapes and angular longitudinal lines .

The most characteristic of this mosaic are the formations in ogives and secant circles, which appear in other similar ones in the Duero Plateau .

All follow Italic and Hellenistic patterns , which persist throughout the Roman Empire . _ _ _ _

In the vicinity of the Villa de la Fuente de San Pedro, there was a population about approx. 650 m to the east, called San Pedro del Otero, whose terminus included the place where the Villa de la Fuente de San Pedro was located as the Fountain.

Although its church belonging to the Villafáfila cillero is not documented until 1310

from which the bishop received two buckets of salt as a tithe ^{^[2]} , the remains that appear in its surroundings date from the 11th century according to ceramic finds, such as the remains of turned pots with incised grid decoration.

Since the end of the 15th century, a term from Villafáfila has been named San Pedro del Yermo, which indicates a reference to depopulation and in 1522 the memory of the tower of the old church in one of the commander's lands is mentioned:

" That is said the land of the tower of San Pedro boundaries on the way to Cañiço ...".

As a sign of the old lordship, in 1498 the “ Palaçio iron ” persisted , in the form of a Rollo. Since then it is easy to identify the payment of "San Pedro del Yermo" in La Loma, including the Fuente de San Pedro, in the boundaries and surveys of the land. Its location is detected in one of the mounds or mounds to the north of the Cañizo road, where remains of tiles, slabs, ceramics and bones, separated from the Roman site, can be seen.

Its location somewhat away from the lagoons raises the question of the place where they would extract the salt that they were obliged to deliver to the Bishop of Astorga. Two possibilities are pointed out: either that their terms reached the Laguna del Triunfo, or that they had the collective property of some inn on the banks of the Salina.

In the work of D. Fernando Regueras Grande, we extract what is related to the Villa Romana de Fuente de San Pedro [3] .

Mosaics from the province of Zamora have been known for several years and have been systematically published on at least two occasions [4] . The fact, however, of having been presented in local magazines or conferences has limited its dissemination. Our work aims precisely, in a synthetic way, to facilitate access to such information, collaborating in this way with the ongoing realization of the Corpus of Roman mosaics of Hispania [5] .

The Zamoran mosaics, all of them tessellated, are the result of archaeological surveys and excavations over the last ten years; Before this date there was only knowledge —since 1861— of the mosaic fragments from the town of Camarzana de Tera, about which —except for scant news— no one had bothered.

Compared with other provinces of the Duero Basin, without going any further, Valladolid, Palencia, León, Soria, etc., it will be observed, in contrast, a great dearth of finds. Scarcity that has obvious causes: the rarity, if not exceptionality, of the excavations until very close dates [6] and the meager prospecting work, still systematically ongoing today through inventories. When some and especially the others, added to the technological transformations of the field have coincided in the last few years, practically all the findings referred to have been produced.

Unfortunately, this certain « archaeological third worldism», happily corrected in recent years, has been responsible for the fact that the location of the mosaics has not been the result of systematic planning and that the excavation processes have been constantly subjected to extra-archaeological irregularities.

Sometimes the impact of harsh agricultural technologies when not the chance of a flood were the traumatic fuses that have required emergency solutions, truly in extremis, whose immediacy is usually the reverse of the ideal method on paper.

These were the cases of the excavations carried out between 1979-82 in the town of Fuente de San Pedro (Villafáfila), excavated under the emergency procedure due to the proven indications of the existence of tessellations when plowing the land with a subsoiler.

In Fuente de San Pedro, some tessellations were extracted and consolidated, others, in the first of the villae . Archaeological interventions have served, without a doubt, for the documentary safeguarding of disappearing sites, but historical seriously compromised if not violated by the social and archaeological affront that the extraction of mosaics supposes when it is not accompanied by their reinstallation and custody in the context from which they come. In this way, pavements are condemned, as is our case, to be the eternal stone guests of our provincial museums.

Remains of a single pavement with a field divided into two schemes. Extraction and consolidation (three of the six fragments): Francisco Gago, 1982.

The deposit is villae or, in certain cases, vici , located in Salado, on the right bank of the Duero. These are, therefore, well-irrigated and well-connected areas, as agronomists (Varrón, Palladio, etc.) recommended, which would explain the absence (at least for the time being) of deposits in the poorest lands of the western peneplains.

There is a continuity of habitat before and after the installation of the villa, taking into account the suitability of the place for habitation and exploitation.

The town of Fuente de San Pedro, for its part, is located in the area of a Visigoth nucleus in the Campos land where a Hispano-Visigothic hoard appeared that ensures a survival of habitation in the 6th and 7th centuries [7] . From then on the only news we have, documentaries, seem to indicate a haste in the 10th century by a certain Fafilani from whom the current town would receive its name [8] .

As for the location or functionality of the pavements inside the mansions they upholstered, we can indicate absolutely nothing about those of Villafáfila and the remains of scattered fragments.

The excavated complex is organized in orderly areas, always around a central chamber lined with the largest mosaic (no. 1): (eleven by eight meters), more complex design and more dazzling effect that, presumably, would play the role that in other villae they perform the peristyles and in ours it could be a kind of oecus . On this core would be arranged on the one hand the series of tessellated pieces to the North, South and East of unequal size, orientation, mosaic decoration and functionality and on the other hand to the North and Northwest, a thermal area from which two or perhaps three rooms were excavated. heated and a possible frigidarium covered with the only parietal mosaic in the entire province, now disappeared. Only in this western direction theThe urban pars of the town extends safely into an unexcavated area of at least one third more than the known area.

«Negative» walls outlined only by the pavements themselves or minimal remains of faded pictorial plinths; outer limits of the enclosure that could only be detected “in tents”: doubtful to the south, clearer to the east with the presence of a culvert, probable on the edge of the mosaics washed away by the river, to the north, unpredictable to the west; superimposition of structures from the late residence and others, of undetermined orientation under walls and pavements, belonging to another villaunderstated... Under these circumstances, any planimetric identification that accommodates even the partial typologies of Fernández Castro is risky; At best, we would have to accept the type of "stately villas not determined by the residential core of the peristyle" (Fernández Castro) and justify their apparent lack of unity based on archaeological lack of documentation [9] .

Chronology remains the key problem in the study of Roman mosaics; only indirectly, through their style or their associated materials, is an approximate dating usually determined.

Both criteria seem to confirm a late chronology for all the Zamoran tessellations, which is consistent with the majority of the tapestries from the villages of the Meseta, corroborating the fact that the profound Romanization of the province occurred at that time. .

In the case of Villafáfila, only stylistic arguments (schemes, designs and chromatic treatment) added to a very limited indirect archaeological documentation and above all to parallels with other similar pavements allow us to venture dates for the first in a framework oscillating between the second half of the fourth century and first of the V and slightly earlier for the second.

In the absence of petrographic analysis of tesserae and screeds, the data provided is indicative and somewhat random.

The materials used in the elaboration of tesserae are not excessively varied: limestone, usually for black and white, although other times (as in Villafáfila, according to its excavator) marble is used; terracotta for brick-red and yellow.

In general, it seems that local or nearby materials are used when they are not manufactured on site, such as terracotta, which is basically used to intensify —at low cost— the chromatic effects of tessellation, for the creation of secondary tapestries such as transit or entrance corridors ( No. 7 of Requejo, perhaps) and almost systematically to limit the paving sets by means of a border of four or five tesserae.

As for the size of the pieces, the oscillations are not very pronounced, around cm ² .

The range of colors is also very restricted: white, black, red and yellow, but despite the use of such a limited palette, the chromatic effects, almost always combined with baroque compositions of textile modulation, produce dazzling results.

Finally, with regard to the floors of the mosaics, it is only possible to refer, again, to the case of Requejo and very partially to that of other sites. In global terms, the absence of tracings prior to tessellation installation should be noted. In the heated rooms the device is the usual one of four brick basins —or perhaps more in other cases— that support four thick bipedal suspensions acting as a statumen on which the successive layers of rudus and nucleus rested in which above a whitewash rested the tesserae.

Some mosaic beds were also excavated and only on one occasion was the canonical arrangement of the three levels: statumen, rudus, nucleus ( Vitruvius, De Arch . VII, I and Pliny, Nat. Hist . XXX, VI, 186-187). This is tile #1.

Currently documented Zamoran mosaics are exclusively geometric; compositions, syntax and lexicon represent a true sample of the most common and widespread types of lower Romanity.

Schemes, as is known, respond to two types: linear and surface, the latter in turn can be isotropic or centered when combined with other patterns . Sometimes the same module fulfills both functions, linear or surface; they are always bichrome: lined in black or simply black, always on a white background. The main variants are established at the ends of the apices: jagged triangles of various sizes or hederas.

The rest of the linear schemes can be divided into bitonal or polychrome. Much more frequent are the polychromes: especially the two-strand braid and less common the guilloche, the warheads inscribed in a semicircle (Villafáfila), in general, all of them common themes popularized in the late world and with a very African taste.

The compositions of surfaces or organizing geometric schemes of the pavement pattern are not very numerous: intersecting circles defining curvilinear and quatrefoil squares and perhaps also meander of swastikas with cable decoration, in Villafáfila

They can be presented in two ways: as isotropic surface compositions, most of the tessellations, or as compositions centered by a pattern that values the space that covers the pavement.

Only in Villafáfila on the same field are two different schemes used, both isotropic.

A) Compositional simplicity despite the apparent complexity and motley that they show at first glance. Hardly eloquent due to their extreme spatio-temporal ubiquity, they nonetheless express different functions. Due to their design simplicity or topographical location, they sometimes play a marginal role (network of intersecting octagons, Requejo No. 7; key bit meander, Requejo No. 4) or, on the contrary, an emblematic role (square with circle tangent and two internal intersecting squares, centering mosaic no. 1, Requejo).

B) Antiquity, since almost all refer to an old Italic pattern, Hellenistic on other occasions (Requejo No. 4 and 7) with a deep-rooted Mediterranean pedigree in both cases. Its archaeological eloquence is provided, however, from a spatial point of view, by its selective diffusion in the context of 'the late villae, especially in the Meseta (Almenara de Adaja, Cuevas de Soria, Los Quintanares, Cardeñajimeno, Becilla de Valderaduey , Quintanilla de la Cueza, etc.) and from a temporal perspective, its density in the late world, historical framework of the development of our tessellations.

C) Versatility, since they are modules used indistinctly in painting, metalwork, sculptural relief, etc.

D) «Africanism» and «Orientalism». This is not the time to rethink the old theme of African and Eastern «influences» in Hispania musivaria. The very notions of «influence» or the undifferentiated consideration of what is African or Eastern are categories as repeated as they are inoperative, which does not, in any case, remove the finding of significant concordances. From this perspective, it must be insisted that the closest parallels of Zamoran pavements are established with the late production of those areas of the Mediterranean and not only in the surface schemes but also in the linear compositions, in the lexical identity and the treatment syntactic and chromatic. Some examples are worth such as the network of secant octagons or the quadrilobes of peltas of Requejo, themes that are not widespread beyond the Pyrenees and the Alps and are very frequent in Africa, the mafia and Hispania; the former —as is also the case with the mesh of circles— also in the eastern Mediterranean;

E) Temporal projection. We have already pointed out that all the Zamoran schemes come from reworked old Italic and Hellenistic patterns, whose validity lasted throughout the Empire. Beyond this, it should be remembered that these models ended up becoming a standardized koine during the Middle Ages, both in the Mediterranean and in Hispania itself, until they were, to a large extent, later codified by Renaissance treatise writers (Serlio, for example).

In Byzantine mosaics, at least until the 7th century [10] in early Islamic art and in Andalusian art in particular [11] and to stick more closely from a spatial and chronological point of view, our patterns are, to a large extent, the repertoire of Hispano-Visigoth relief bezels and the substratum of Asturian painting (and relief), which, as is known, represented a true renovation of ancient traditions [12] .

A very simple theme can serve as a sample button: the network of intersecting octagons that describe a series of squares surrounded by elongated hexagons. It is a scheme that in musivaria is known from the House of the Faun in Pompeii and survives until the 6th and 7th centuries in Jordanian churches. Its most notable feature is that it is a very common pattern in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa and quite rare in the North of the Pyrenees and the Alps, if not unprecedented in much of the West of the Empire. Its abundance in Hispania is also significant , especially in late times until it became an almost exclusive theme of the paleo-Christian basilicas and a common place of the low-imperial villae of the Meseta. Such proliferation in mosaic and painting ( Clunia, Sta. Eulalia de la Bóveda), perhaps explains its success among Hispano-Visigothic reliefs (Head of the Greek) or its repeated appearance in Asturian churches (Santullano, San Miguel de Lillo, San Salvador de Valdedios, Santiago de Gobiendes) and miniature Mozarabic (Juan de Albares Bible, among others) not to mention the geometric atauriques on stone, stucco or Andalusian tiles.

As for the filling motifs, they are treated from a known lexicon: polychrome peltas, lozenges, triangles and scutiforms, irregular checkerboard shapes and sinuous longitudinal lines in Villafáfila.

Vocabulary not very extensive, ancient, old decoded prophylactic themes (hedera, Solomon's knot) that are now intertwined with geometric designs and vegetal schematizations, all integrated by that baroque taste of textile modulation, whose chromatic pregnance frequently conceals the carelessness of formal rigor.

Variegated and aniconic taste that is parallel to the definitive disintegration of classical imagery whose last embers in the field of musivaria can be found in the Achilles mosaic of Santiesteban del Puerto (Jaén) and Estada (Zaragoza). Here we touch on the key problem of style, that is, without idealistic connotations, a style that at this historical moment of the late fourth and early fifth centuries has an unequivocal name: aniconism.

The phenomenon of aniconism —for which Byzantium would pay such a high price centuries later and which in Islán would become a hallmark of artistic identity— has been addressed on some occasions by scholars of the time.

Analyzing early Christian tessellations from Heraklea Lynkestis , Tomasevich indicates that at the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th there was "a development of aniconism in reaction against the pagan and oriental spirit of Constantinian figurations." An edict of Theodosius II in 427 expressly prohibited depicting holy images and symbols on pavements [13] .

H. Lavagne, for his part, insists, with regard to those of Aquileia, that in the 5th century the pavements of this city abandoned images and concentrated on an ornamental and geometric register at the same time that the palette was impoverished [14] .

Complicated compositions based on sinuous interlacing will triumph in the Mediterranean between Theodosius and Justinian.

D. Fernández Galiano, lately, when dealing with "Oriental influences in Hispanic mosaics" (late) refers to the tendency to aniconism as the most characteristic feature whose most notable manifestation will be the proliferation of the geometric element in the tessellations [15] .

In Hispania also and in the Meseta and less deeply Romanized territories in particular, the resumption of the old aniconic indigenous traditions must have reinforced this trend which, beyond a passing fashion, expressed the profound changes that a society experienced in the transition towards feudalization. .

Thus, the set of Roman tessellations represents, on the very edge of the end of Roman times, the two mosaic traditions that had developed during the empire: the italic black and white (always subject to certain color intrusions) and the old-rooted polychrome Hellenistic but whose most complete flowering had occurred in Africa.

Bulletin of the Art and Archeology Studies Seminar: BSAA, ISSN 0210-9573, Volume 57, 1991, pp. 163-177

History of salt mines in the Villafáfila lagoons. P. 27,28, 29, 30, 31, 37 and 52.

https://www.jcyl.es/web/jcyl/AgriculturaGanaderia/es/Plantilla100Detalle/1246464862173/ACU/1207034696075/CParcelaria

Medieval settlement of the Villafáfila lagoons region according to medieval documentary sources.

https://agriculturaganaderia.jcyl.es/web/jcyl/binarios/312/862/VILLAFA_ACU_PLA_012.TIF?blobheader=image%2Ftiff&blobheadername2=site&blobheadername3=Cache-control&blobheadername4=Expires&blobheadervalue2=JCYL_AgriculturaGanaderia&blobheadervalue3=no-cache%2Cno-cache%2Cno-cache%2Cno-cache%2Cno-cache%2Cno-cache%2Cno-cache revalidate&blobheadervalue4=0

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All text and photography has been authorized for storage, treatment, work, transcription and assembly to José Luis Domínguez Martínez, its dissemination on villafafila.net, and any other means that is authorized.

[1] Martín Valls and Delibes,1977: 313.

[2] Cabero 1987.

[3] Fernando Regueras Grande: Some considerations on the mosaics of Zamora . Bulletin of the Art and Archeology Studies Seminar: BSAA, ISSN 0210-9573, Volume 57, 1991, pp. 163-177 . Full text (pdf): https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/2689039.pdf

[4] REGUERA S, F.: «Remains and news of Roman mosaics in the province of Zamora», First of the Institute of Zamorano Studies «Florián de Ocampo» 1985, pp. 39-57 and idem; «The mosaics of the Roman villa of Requejo (Santa Cristina de la Polvorosa)», Proceedings of the^1stCongress of the History of Zamora, Zamora (1988) 1990, pp. 637 to 696.

[5] In progress, the systematic cataloging of Hispanic mosaics follows several criteria: either urban Corpora ‹Itálica and Mérida), provincial (Seville, Granada, Cádiz, Murcia, Navarra, Córdoba, Jaén, Málaga, Ciudad Real , Toledo, Madrid, Cuenca, Soria, Lérida and Albacete) or institutional (National Archaeological Museum, Academy of History) promoted by the CSIC through the Corpus of Roman Mosaics of Spain, with nine issues published between 1978-1989, following, in part, the French models (Recueil des Mosaïques antiques de la Gaule j, Italian (Mosaici Antichi in Italia) and Tunisian (Corpus des Mosaïques de Tunisie); wellSystematic Corpora de Conventus, inaugurated by Balil (Tarraconense), Acuña (Gallaecia; Lucense and Bracarense), Ramallo (Cartaginense), Fernández Galiano (Cesaraugustano) or shorter but homogeneous regions: Barral ( Regio Laietana ); well from cities: Vall (Sagunto), Fernández Galiano ( Complutum ), Navarro (Tarragona).

The provincial methodology that we use is due to reasons of administrative opportunity and in no case to criteria of historical suitability that would be the correct ones. In any case, our study is included within a broader work on the Roman mosaics of the Conventus Asturum .

[6] When prologuing his Archaeological Testimony of the Province of Zamora, Virgilio Sevillano in 1974 recalled only two excavations —and old ones—: those of the author himself in Villalazán and those of P. Morán in the dolmens of Almeida and Granucillo.

[7] FERNANDEZ, JJ: «E1 Visigoth treasure of Villafáfila (Zamora)», NUMANTIA III 1990, pp. 195-208.

[8] RODRIGUEZ, J. J .: Monasterio Ardón , Center for Studies and Research S. Isidoro de León, León 19ó4, p. 99.

[9] FERNANDEZ CASTRO, MC:Roman Villas in Spain, Madrid 1982, pp. 61 and 120-130.

[10] VV.AA.:I Mosaici di Giordania(Exhibition Catalogue), Rome 1986,passim.

[11] PAVON MALDONADO, B.:The Hispanic-Muslim art in its geometric decoration. A theory for a style. Madrid (2nd edition), 1989; see above all compositions based on octagons.

[12] SCHLUNK, H. and HAUSCHILD, Th.: Hispania Antiqua. Die Denkmäler der frühchristlichen und westgotischen Zeit, Mainz 1978.Ldms. 47, 64a, 67, 107a and c, 114, 122a, 130a, etc. for the Visigothic case and SCHLUNK, H. and BERENGUER, M.:Asturian painting of the9th and 10th centuries,' Madrid 1957, passim (seeinfra).

[13] TOMASEVICH, GC: «Mosaïques paleochretiennes ä Heraklea Lynkestis», La Mosaïque antiqueII, Paris (1971), 1975 p. 388.

[14] LAVAGNE, H.: «Mosaïques antiques et paleochretiennes»,Les dossiers d'Archêologie. Aquilée romaine et paleochretiennesn. 95, 1985, p. 60-61.

[15] FDEZ-GALIANO, D.: «Oriental influences in Hispanic musivaria»; Proceedings of the III Colloquium Internationale sul mosaic antico II(1980) 1984, Ravenna, pp. 427-428