OPPIDUM
Hornachuelos is an archaeological enclave that constitutes a strategic elevation of the land located in the municipality of Ribera del Fresno. It is located on the road that connects Ribera del Fresno with Hinojosa del Valle at km 3. From this point, indicated with a monolith, you follow a marked path that leads to the site, which occupies a hill next to Cañada Real Leonesa and the Matachel river. The oppidum or fortified city of Hornachuelos is recognized by some authors as the ancient "Fornacis", referred to by Ptolemy in his "Geographical Guide". The place will not be recognized in the traditional bibliography until the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, with the first systematic excavations being carried out in the 80s. Successive excavations have shown that it was populated in the late Copper or Chalcolithic Age (2000-1900 BC), reaching its maximum splendor in the Roman Republican era (mid-2nd century BC and the end of the 1st century BC), a period to which the vestiges of more complex houses and the streets laid out in the longitudinal direction of the hill belong. The excavated remains correspond to a small fortified settlement (cough stone wall linked with mud, flanked with semicircular bastions typical of the time) located in the highest part of the hill, at a level slightly higher than that of the future Spanish-Roman settlement. Hornachuelos will remain uninhabited for about two thousand years. Finally, in the middle of the 2nd century BC, shortly after the Lusitanian wars, the place repopulated.
Within the framework of the “Alba Plata” Project of the Ministry of Culture in 2002, the recovery and enhancement of the archaeological site takes place, which has focused mainly on the application of protection and consolidation measures for all its structures and in the implementation of dissemination measures in order to offer visitors educational resources for their interpretation. At present it can be visited through a route supported by an informative signage of all the known elements that make up the settlement. This tour begins at the base of zero, once you have passed the entrance, where the necropolis is located. You ascend through a path until you reach the second area you can visit, a large cistern from where we access the top of the hill. At this point a large part of the urban fabric of the oppidum and its defensive system can be observed.
