Motilla del Acequión — Heritage

We began our archaeological journey on this blog, because we are also dedicated to Heritage, with the aim of showing you some interesting areas as far as Heritage is concerned, inside and outside our province. We started with this post dedicated to the Motilla del Acequión in Albacete, whose location you can see on the attached map. This is one of the lagoons, now desiccated, of an endorheic nature in the region of Los Llanos surrounding the capital, in the direction of the town of Barrax.

It was a fortified settlement from the Manchego Bronze Age (which gave rise to the Iberian Culture) and was occupied for about 400 years, between 2,200 and 1,800 BC. Its inhabitants were sedentary and practiced agriculture with a certain degree of intensification, as well as livestock and hunting.

The town occupied what was a small islet next to one of its shores, so that it had to be almost always surrounded by water.

Its sequence was established in three phases, it began with a fairly small, walled enclosure, approximately circular in shape of about 25-30 m in diameter, and whose space was soon overwhelmed by the growth of the population, which began to be installed outside this enclosure.

Phase II is characterized by a population recession, and the stratigraphic deposit appears to be mostly formed by levels of collapse.

Finally, Phase III is characterized by a strong reconstruction of the wall and the construction of a second one, concentric and outside the first enclosure, which orders and expands the space to be occupied, in addition to being built with a strong slope on the outside that functions as a dam facing the waters of the lagoon.

We encourage you to visit it, here is its location.