First results of the excavation of the medieval castle of Dos Hermanas (Montemayor, Cordoba)

In the south of the kingdom of Córdoba, there is the castle so-called Dos Hermanas, located in the municipality of the current town of Montemayor. It has been considered that the construction of the castle of this stately town was the result of the first moments of decline of the fortress of Dos Hermanas, located on the bank of the Carchena stream. Currently, a first excavation campaign has been carried out that brings us closer to the anthropic occupation of the site. At the same time, the archival research gives new information to the history of the site, exceeding the date of 1340, when Don Martín Alonso de Córdoba partially destroyed the Arab fortress of Dos Hermanas to build the castle of Montemayor. The first data extracted from the field work support the written sources, providing us with new data that allow us to make a more complete and novel interpretation. The survival of part of the facilities of the Dos Hermanas castle with an occupation from Roman times to the sixteenth century that shows the total non-depopulation of the place in the fourteenth century, as previously thought. A high degree of conservation of the structures found inside the wall enclosure appears a southern bay with stables with nine mangers. To the west, there is a vain and an angled staircase that allowed access from the parade ground until the round pass over the main door, which is also preserved. The objective of this proposal will be to present these first results of the archaeological intervention centered on the southern wall of the castle. These research works are accompanied by a consolidation project of the main structures, all financed by the Provincial Delegation of Cordoba and Montemayor Town Hall, whose continuity is developed in 2019 and 2020.