: Sierra del Aljibe

The protohistoric site of the Sierra del Aljibe (Aliseda, Cáceres) is integrated in the Sierra de San Pedro, a small mountain range that defines the southwestern sector of Cáceres peneplain. From the summit, occupied largely by quartzite outcrops, wide panoramic areas of forest, meadows, pastures and farmland can be seen. Metallogenic registers of iron, lead, silver and tin must be added to these potentialities, whose benefit in antiquity is not documented. The settlement is located in the upper third of the north side of this remarkable elevation (603 m). The habitat might have been developed in terraces due to the numerous talus that, at different heights and in the transverse direction, break the slope. The approximate area of the settlement is estimated at 4 Ha. To little over 1 Km north-northeast, the current Aliseda population is located. His street list includes the Treasure Street, where it appears there was the famous discovery in 1920. However, surveys conducted in 1994 on that street before paving, were negative.

On the opposite, the urgent excavations in Sierra del Aljibe in 1995, during the installation of a station-based by Telefónica to improve cell phone, reported an occupational sequence that allowed since then propose the most probably relation of this location with the famous orientalising treasure (VII-VI centuries BC). Specifically, we identified three protohistoric horizons, Late Bronze-Orientalising-Postorientalising, dating from 800-400 BC. After leaving the site during IV-II BC, a period in which the population was concentrated in small and fortified castra, like Sansueña, Sierra del Aljibe would be inhabited again at the end of the Age, within a period marked by the presence of the Romans in the area. Various problems have prevented the resumption of the excavations of 1995 in this project.