Iruña-Veleia

Iruña - Veleia is an important archeological site in the municipality of Iruña de Oca ( Iruña Oka ) in the province of Álava ( Araba ), the Autonomous Community of Basque Country, in the immediate vicinity of the place Trespuentes. Initial reports of the ruins there since the 16th century first excavations took place in 1900. Since 1949, research is being conducted in various campaigns continuously up to the present.

The emergence of the finds spans over fifteen hundred years from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC to the 5th century AD. So they present the Late Bronze Age, early and late pre-Roman Iron Age and Roman rule. The Roman city, Veleia, had an area of ​​about one square kilometer.

For a stir initially made ​​the discovery of a considerable number of fragments of pottery from the 3rd to the 5th century with Basque chunks of text, mainly in Latin script. Equally striking in the house of Pompeia Valentina, which was inhabited continuously from the 1st to the 5th century, found about 270 inscriptions and drawings written on pottery ( shards ), including Egyptian motifs and hieroglyphics correctly. In November 2008, a group of researchers suggested that it is in these first as historically designated discoveries to be counterfeit, after which the Prospector Eliseo Gil was deprived of his office. Although this dismissed the allegations but could not prove it in January 2009, the authenticity of his findings before the Parliament of the province of Álava.