RESTORATION AND EXCAVATION
Our
objectives are the restoration and excavation of the main structures at
Son Peretó. In June 2009, archaeologists found a washing basin used
before church services next to a baptismal font. While this is not uncommon
for this type of church, it is the first example found on Mallorca.
The year prior, we completed the majority of the restoration work on the main baptismal font. At that time we removed the basin for restoration, and thus had the opportunity to excavate below. During our first campaign in 2005, we discovered pottery sherds in the foundations of the walls that allow us to date that area of the site to, at the earliest, around the year 500. Piecing together a chronology of the various buildings and areas is another of our objectives for the coming year. While the evidence so far suggests the basilica was built during the Byzantine time, other areas of the settlement could have been inhabited by previous cultures.
Son Peretó was first discovered in 1912 in a field near the town of Manacor. The first archaeological work uncovered a basilica-shaped church 21 meters long and 14 meters wide, with three naves separated by rows of columns. Subsequent excavations took place in 1967 by the University of Barcelona, focusing on the mosaic floors (now housed in the Manacor Historical Museum), and in the early 1980s by the Mallorca Museum and the universities of Palma and Barcelona.
We will be living in a house at the seaside village of Port Nou, excavating
at Son Peretó and in the afternoon doing lab work at the Manacor Historical
Museum. All three places are MARKED ON THIS MAP.
HISTORICAL
CONTEXT OF THE BALEARIC ISLANDS
The Balearic Islands came under Roman rule in 123 BC when General
Quintus Caecilus Metellus conquered Mallorca and Menorca. By the end of
the 1st century BC, during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, the archipelago
formed part of the Tarraconensis, one of the three Roman provinces in Hispania.
At that time, the cities of Palma and Pollentia were the most important
urban centers on Mallorca.
As the Western Roman Empire fell during the end of the 5th century, the Vandals invaded the islands, but their presence lastest only a century before the Byzantine Empire, or the Eastern Roman Empire, absorbed Mallorca into its domain. The Byzantines were expanding into the western Mediterranean to try to restore the western empire, what scholars refer to as the 'renovatio imperii.' The islands came under Byzantine control in 534. The eastern empire ruled Mallorca for nearly two centuries, and Son Peretó is one of the best known settlements for studying that period. Once the Byzantine grip crumbled in Iberia around the year 707, little is known about life on the Balearic Islands, beginning a series of so-called dark centuries. Only continuing archaeology will tell.