Mulva VI

More than fifty years of excavation and research in the Municipium Flavium Muniguense, or Munigua (Mulva) have yielded a great number of minor objects. Those objects were found mainly without context and in fragmentary condition all over the city’s area. Nevertheless, they give a glimpse into Munigua’s history with its peak and gradual decline. Sporadic flint implements indicate that the hilltop of the settlement has been visited since Stone Age. Decorative elements of belts, a spur fastener, sporadic weapons and tools of Iberian-Turdetan period give evidence for the settlement’s importance and its wealth founded on the mining of copper and iron. The promotion to the rank of a Municipium in the era of the Flavian emperors and the raising of monumental buildings of Roman type adorned with bronze statues of Roman emperors on top of the hill mark the zenith of this development. According to fragments found those statues have been intentionally turned into scrap metal in later centuries. But the minor objects consisting of fibulae, belt buckles, plates of inscriptions, writing implements, seal boxes, medical instruments, spindles and loom weights show a lively urban and globally networking daily life. Religious votives demonstrate the continuing cult of traditional indigenous deities. Fragments of furniture and gates give information about living beyond architectural remains. The transformation of once elegant houses into farmsteads and stables is the result of a change in the economic basis in later antiquity. The smelting of iron instead of copper was located within the city and even in the houses now abandoned. Traces of work were again discovered all over the city. In Migration Period only few people have lived around the hill. The Arabic Period is marked by horseshoes, locks, bolts and household objects. Maybe a number of mounted guards had been stationed on the far visible hill.