The archaeological site of Libisosa is located in the "Cerro del Castillo" in the municipality of Lezuza (Albacete, Castilla-La Mancha). As a result of archaeological excavations (begun in 1996 by a team from the University of Alicante led by José Uroz Sáez, and continued uninterruptedly since then), it is now known that the site covers 30 hectares of remains ranging from the Late Bronze Age to the Late Middle Ages, the latter presided over by the watchtower that bears the name of the hill, and to which also corresponds a building of the military orders. From the Roman period, the late Republican wall and the forum of the Roman colony mentioned by Pliny the Elder (NH, III, 25) stand out, while the final phase of the Iberian oppidum assigned to the regio oretana by Ptolemy (II, 6, 58) stands out. The excellent preservation of structures and materials of the Ibero-Roman stage of Libisosa is due to the "burial effect" caused by its hasty and systematic destruction, which has allowed a frozen image of its state prior to the devastation to reach the present day, which constitutes a mine for research on the Final Iberian and Republican Hispania, most of which has yet to be discovered.
In 2021, steps were taken to declare the site an archaeological park. It is the second park in the province of Albacete, and the sixth in the entire Castilian-La Mancha region.
The Oretano oppidum
The first archaeological evidence of occupation of the hill dates back to the Final Bronze Age, by virtue of the discovery of prehistoric handmade pottery scattered throughout the site, with only a special concentration in Sector 2, where there also seem to be traces of habitat, and where can be found gray pottery vessels, placing this context in an arc from the IX/VIII to VI century BC, at the time of transition between the Final Bronze Age and the I Iron /Orientalizing period. The continuity of the habitat in the ancient Iberian period is logical, and there are several factors that suggest that this oppidum played a key role in the region.
But if there is a stage of Libisosa mentioned by Ptolemy (II, 6, 58) among the Iberian cities of Oretania, worthy of note due to the archaeological findings, it is the one that corresponds to the final phase, which covers the 2nd century to the first third of the 1st century B.C., and which provides information on various aspects of the life of an Oretan community under the rule of Rome, probably of stipendiary peregrinus, in a stage of its Romanization process that could be described as early, probably favored, among other reasons, by the presence of Italic traders and, above all, by an army corps (or soldiers housed in hospice regime) that would provide security to the routes that converge there. The process of Romanization will run parallel, paradoxically, to another of self-affirmation, finding in iconography an ideal canvas (as also shown by some unique vases found in Libisosa) to extol Iberian aristocratic virtue, within the framework of the construction of its own mythology, for its internal cohesion (of the ruling group and its clientele) and, in short, to maintain its privileges in the face of the new Roman order.
And if this phase is important it is due to its exceptional state of preservation, motivated by a sudden destruction, which has been related to the Sertorian wars (82-72 BC), and which offers an unaltered image of the moment immediately prior to that devastation, both in terms of structures and materials. The discovery of an infant skeleton lying on one of the streets is a testimony to the cruelty of this episode and the rupture it entailed.
Two sectors stand out from what is known as the Ibero-Roman quarter: