(En prensa) LATOMIA CORDUBA Y DAMNATIO AD METALLA. UNA HIPÓTESIS DE TRABAJO EN LA CANTERA CASTILLO DE MAIMÓN (CÓRDOBA, ESPAÑA)

The city life depends on its landscape. In this sense, every city gets a number of quarries on its landscape that constitute a natural ressource to encourage town-planning projects. In ager cordubensis we know just a few examples: Santa Ana de la Albaida, Peñatejada, Arruzafilla and Las Pilas. Our knowledge about such knowledge is quite limited with respect other áreas of the Iberian Peninsula, which implies a significant lack of interest. In our investigation, we hace identified aroud “Castillo de Maimón” (Barriada del Naranjo) an important open-air quarry dedicated to the extraction extraction of blocks of calcarenita. This área has never been recognised, hence our interest to spread the first results of the study in this paper. This archaeological site provides us with information about Stone eexploitations and quarry organization, becoming an important paradigm for this field. There are different extraction points, we identified seven points, thus we were able to purpose an estimation of extraction. According to us, the quarry of Castillo de Maimón could has been possible to build the most important edifices of Corduba / Colonia Patricia, like the City Wall and building related to the entertainment arts. Therefore, the close location of the cquarry to Corduba (2,4km) could indicate us it may have been  the first quarry to be exploited under a public ownership.The major point of interest regarding this place is the possibility of achieving a deeper and more understanding approach about the organization of work. Indeed, the no-alteration of the archaeological site has allowed us to preserve some remains of a cistern structure; we have also identified rests of elevated control platforms, sculpted stonebed. All the components define the articulation of an exploitation plan. Moreover, the location and the topographical and morphological features of Castillo de Maimón reflect its origin as a rectangular castrum, which could be associated to a military camp for one centuria (80 soldiers).The archaeological rests allow to understand an organization of control, it means the possibility applied of damnatio ad metalla. Damnatio ad metalla was a juridiciary Roman punishment associated to the exploitation of mines, although the destiny of the convicts was also linked to the quarries. We know Cordoba was proconsul’s headquarter (the highest authrity in juridical and penal field). For the coercitio’s task, this authority had several military unities named cohortes Baeticae, we propose their participation in the exploitation in order to control the convicts sentenced to damnatio ad metalla.