Pizarras numerales de época posromana y contextos arqueológicos: el yacimiento de El Castillón (Santa Eulalia de Tábara, Zamora)

Abstract

This paper is focused on the site of El Castillón (Santa Eulalia de Tábara, Zamora) and the numerical slates found there. It was a fortified rural settlement with a strong occupation during 5th and 6th centuries, including domestic units, metallurgical kilns, a lot of pottery sherds, some of them of high-level productions, and faunal remains. After an hiatus, the site was re-occupied in the 9th-10th centuries, when a monu- mentalized church linked to some burials was constructed. During the excavation of that church, two small fragments of numerical slates were found as removed or reused materials. Those slates have the same features than others from different sites. But there is a clear difference with other fortified rural settlements where great concentrations of slates have been found, probably as a result of accounting needs related to the control of tolls. Those slates were not archive documents if not a preliminary note discarded once the information was copied on a di- fferent text. The management of waste was a key to understand the archaeological secondary position of those pieces and their preservation, because an intense occupation of the site may be the cause of the destruction of the slates. The hypothesis is that El Castillón seems to have been an influential “central place” in Post-Roman times, with the use of accountability in slates, a material that came from other near areas. But the construction of the church disturbed the prior waste deposits and some of the slates were part of the building operations of the 9th-10th centuries. Another conclusion is the spread of the mathematical system seen on the slates, with could be used with very different functions, so it must not be understood as a single pattern.