The Roman Villa of Sa Mesquida

(Calvià, Mallorca)

The site of Sa Mesquida, in the western part of Mallorca (Fig. 1), is one of the few examples of rural Roman sites that has been documented. Sa Mesquida was partially excavated in the 1980s and 1990s, followed by new archaeological excavations undertaken in 2010 (Mas Florit et al. 2015). The site is currently divided into two sectors because it was affected by various modern constructions. In the first sector, the remains consist of a series of rooms, organized around a courtyard with a well, and a partially destroyed pottery kiln, both of which were affected by modern constructions. This is one of only two Roman pottery kilns that have been identified on the island of Mallorca. In the second sector, the only element that is preserved is a cistern that was used as a rubbish dump in Late Antiquity.

The cistern contained large quantities of ceramics, building materials, and fauna, primarily dating to the first half of the fifth century, with some later materials from the Byzantine period (Orfila and Cau 1994; Cau 2003). In 2010, excavations undertaken in the first sector were focused on both the rooms and the pottery kiln. The results suggest that the settlement was founded in the Augustean period or slightly early and that it was at least partially destroyed by fire in the late second or early third century CE.

Excavation of the kiln enabled us to document the stoking area, fire-tunnel, firing chamber and part of the central pillar. The pottery workshop produced a variety of relatively fine common ceramics, mainly jars, made of calcareous clay fired at about 950οC. Archaeometric characterization of the ceramic materials has also allowed us to define a reference group for the pottery produced at this workshop.

Funding: Consell de Mallorca, Ajuntament de Calvià.

Some references:

• Cau, M.A. (ed.) (2008), Estudi arqueològic i caracterització arqueomètrica de la ceràmica comuna romana del forn de Sa Mesquida (Calvià, Mallorca), El Tall 16, Palma de Mallorca.
• Marimon, P., Riera, M., Cau, M.A. and Orfila M. (2005), Ánforas de la Antigüedad Tardía de la cisterna de Sa Mesquida (Calvià, Mallorca), in M.L. Sánchez-León and M. Barceló (coords.), L’Antiguitat clàssica i la seva pervivència a les Illes Balears, Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics, Palma de Mallorca, 409-421.
• Mas, C., Cau, M.A. and Orfila, M. (2005), El taller de cerámica de Sa Mesquida (Calviá, Mallorca): una aproximación a la tipología de la cerámica común fina, in M.L. Sánchez-León and M. Barceló (coords.), L’Antiguitat clàssica i la seva pervivència a les Illes Balears, Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics, Palma de Mallorca, 395-408.
• Mas Florit, C., Vallori Márquez B., Murrieta Flores, P., Rivas Antequera, M. J., Cau, M.A. (2015), The Roman uilla of Sa Mesquida: a rural settlement on the island of Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain), in P. Militello, H. Oniz (eds) Proceedings of the 15th Symposium of the Mediterranean Archaeology: 461-466, British Archaeological Reports, International Series 2695(I). Archaeopress: Oxford.
• Orfila, M. and Cau, M.A. (1994), Las cerámicas finas procedentes de la cisterna de Sa Mesquida, Calvià (Mallorca), in III Reunió d’Arqueologia Cristiana Hispànica, Maó, 12-17 de setembre de 1988: 257-288. Monografies de la Secció Històrico-Arqueològica, Institut d’Estudis Catalans: Barcelona.
• Pecci, A. and Cau, M.A. (2014), Residue analysis of Late Roman cooking pots and amphorae from Sa Mesquida (Mallorca, Balearic Islands), in N. Polou-Papadimitriou, E. Nodaru and V. Kilikoglou (eds.), LRCW4. Late Roman Coarse Wares, Cooking Wares and Amphorae: Archaeology and Archaeometry. The Mediterranean: A market without frontiers, British Archaeological Reports, International Series 2616 (II): 833-842.
• Tsantini, E., Buxeda, J., Cau, M.A. and Orfila, M. (2004), Caracterización arqueométrica de la cerámica común producida en la villa romana de Sa Mesquida (Mallorca), Pyrenae, 35(1), 157-186.