On Friday 15 January, the students of the Master’s Degree in Archaeology of the UV had the opportunity of carrying out a practical activity in Torre Bofilla, a real site located in the municipality of Bétera, on the outskirts of Valencia.
19 january 2016
On Friday 15 January, the students of the Master’s Degree in Archaeology of the UV carried out a practical activity in Torre Bofilla, a real site located in the municipality of Bétera. The activity was lead by Agustí Diez Castillo, professor of the practical subjects of “prospection” and “excavation”. The activity counted with the participation of 16 students from different countries: Spanish, Venezuelan or Greek. The activity entitled “excavation workshop” -which is part of the practical workshop courses within the Master’s Degree- was aimed at documenting the excavation through georeferenciation of pictures, which allows a latter construction of the structures in order to leave a record and to work with them. Documentation is considered to be the most important part of archaeology; as stated by Agustí Diez, “archaeology is like a novel, but once its pages are turned they are destroyed and cannot be read again”. This is why carrying out a good documentation process is very important in order to collect data which allows the reconstruction of these passages we are turning and destroying.
The professor mentioned that the activity was the first opportunity the students had to carry out a task of this nature, but it was not their first practical activity as they had already carried out others in prospection. The students, who were enthusiastic about the activity and who felt as one, had the opportunity of putting into practise all the knowledge acquire during the theoretical lessons. This experience may be one of the most relevant ones for the students of the Master’s Degree in Archaeology of the UV as they were able to carrying out different tasks explained during the classes in a short time period and to learning techniques which cannot be learnt reading; according to a student, “without these practical activities, the theoretical lessons would be useless”.
Additionally, it is a luxury to do practical activities such as this one in one of the first Medieval archaeology interventions which were done in the Iberian Peninsula (a discipline which has not been very developed to date). The Torre Bofilla was excavated in 1974 for the first time by a group of French people; it became the starting point for medieval archaeology at the Valencian Community. The site is composed of a defence tower and an Islamic village which dates back to the 11th Century and until the 14th Century, moment in which depopulation started.
The activity ended satisfactorily for all the attendees; for sure, students are anxious for the next one to arrive.
