Cuatrovitas (Bollullos de la Mitación, Seville, Spain): Field research on an Almohad settlement and mosque

In a cooperate research project, the University of Bamberg and the University of Sevilla have investigated the former mosque, presently church of the ‘Ermita de Cuatrovitas’ (municipality of Bullulos de la Mitación, province of Sevilla) and the associated abandoned medieval settlement. During several campaigns of field research (2013–2015 and 2017–2018), a wide range of research methods and techniques was applied: survey prospection, archaeological excavation in more than two dozen trenches, as well as traditional and technically advanced techniques of building documentation (3D laser scan), supplemented by pollen analysis, zoological and anthropological analyses. Previous research on this site had consisted in small-scale mapping of the former mosque and its minaret, and in limited exploration of structures in the vicinity of the building. The minaret of the former mosque has parallels in other monuments of the Almohad period regarding its construction and the polylobed double arcades on its façades. It has been emblematic for the site, now associated with the Holy Virgin of Cuatrovitas.

Archaeological finds documented during the campaigns are the first to demonstrate that the habitation of Cuatrovitas also predates the Almohad period. On multiple locations, older pit fills were secured, and pre-Almohad material could be documented among more recent finds in horizontal filling layers. This pre-Almohad material consists, among others, of 10th and 11th century ceramics and single finds of the emiral period (8th century). These thus clearly indicate that there must have been a pre-Almohad settlement, even if concerning building structures could not (yet) be localized.

A post-Almohad stage was recognized from the time after the Christian reconquest and establishment of Castilian power in 1248. The environment of the sacral building, by then converted from mosque into church, was in use as a graveyard, as several burials confirm. These can be attributed Christians according to burial positions. Ceramics dating from the second half of the 13th century only offer a few sherds of the so called transition ceramics, produced by Islamic potters near the street of Gibraltar. These ceramics in themselves do not allow unequivocal conclusions on the religion of their posessors, so that the cultural characteristics of this period remain to be determined more closely. In the the 14th century, late-medieval ‘Christian’ ceramics are clearly dominating and were found after all in layers close to the little church, former mosque of Cuatrovitas.