Evolución urbana y resiliencia en Cartagenapervivencia y cambio de la ciudad entre las épocas altoimperial y altomedieval. El paradigma del parque arqueológico del Molinete

Abstract

The main objective of this PhD thesis is the study of the transformations that urban planning in Cartagena underwent during Late Antiquity. The research focuses on the changes that took place in the urban landscape between the 3rd century AD and the 6th century AD, a particularly unknown period. To this end, a compilation has been made of the information provided by written sources and, above all, by the archaeological finds documented in the urban centre. Until now, the data known on this issue have come mostly from archaeological development-led excavations, characterised mainly by the partial nature of the results obtained. In this sense, the recent excavations carried out in the Archaeological Park of Molinete have provided interesting and novel information on the evolution of the north-western sector of the city. Through the exhaustive analysis (articulation of the spaces, stratigraphic sequence, construction techniques and ceramic contexts) of the evidence identified in several of the areas excavated in this archaeological site, it has been possible to identify a series of general trends about the transformation processes that took place in this urban sector, which allow us to qualify the traditionally accepted hypothesis about the general evolutionary dynamics of Carthago Nova in the late period. Up to now, the available information presented a city ruined by an acute recession that from the end of the 2nd century AD barely allowed it to survive, despite having become the capital of the new province Carthaginiensis at the end of the 3rd century AD. This work proposes a chronological readjustment of some of the already known phases of occupation. Thus, it seems that the process of recession was not as sudden as previously thought and that the subsequent recovery was slow but began earlier than generally accepted. This continuity of the city meant that the urban layout was maintained, although with certain changes, until a fairly late date when a more irregular grid was created, similar to the characteristic designs of the medieval period. New data also raise some questions about the occupation of the city in the 6th-7th centuries AD.