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The Celtiberian bronze of Novallas

Novallas, Tarazona y el Moncayo, Zaragoza

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 2 Activities · 2 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

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The Celtiberian bronze of Novallas

Historical milestone · Novallas, Tarazona y el Moncayo, Zaragoza

Image of Novallas, not of the place itself.

At the Chicharroya III site, in the district of Novallas, a fragment of a bronze plaque dated to the second half of the 1st century BC was found by chance. It preserves eleven lines and around forty words, probably arranged in columns, engraved in the Latin alphabet in an Indo-European Paleohispanic language, almost certainly Celtiberian; it may be an official, public text whose content cannot be determined for now. It is an exceptional find because it shows a loanword from Latin into that language -the word publicus appears four times- and a new sign, a marked S that would indicate a fricative or affricate sound, one of the oldest known cases of the adaptation of the Latin alphabet to a Paleohispanic language. There were Roman farming villas in the area.

siglo I a. C.

Photo: Jesús Baquedano (CC BY 2.5)

What to see and do in Novallas