Abstract:

The castellum of Can Tacó/Turó d’en Roïna (Montmeló-Montorés del Vallés) is located on a small hill (turó in Catalan) from which it controlled the Via Augusta, strategic axis of Romanization of the peninsula. It is one of the oldest Roman sites found in Catalonia. The archaeological excavations carried out since 2003 thanks to the collaboration between the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICAC), ESTRATS, S.L., and the councils of the respective localities, enabled to date with precision the lifetime of this site between the last third of the 2nd century BC and the first quarter of the 1st century BC. During the 2005 campaign of excavations, numerous fragments of tegulae and imbrex were recovered in the areas 5 and 5b. They provided evidence through which the type of roof that the Roman building had could be deduced. This type of ceramic material, most of which was very well preserved, had a double interest: a) some of the tegulae showed the typical traits of materials of Italian origin b) the chronology of the site enabled to assume that they were the first examples of a purely local production of building materials (tegulae and imbrex). Therefore, some of the pieces were selected to proceed to its archaeometric analysis in order to establish their provenance and to draw conclusions about the import of building materials and the beginning of the first local productions.