“The deliberate placement of the pugio in the burial is a way of signaling the social position of the buried and his belonging to the army,” said César M. Pérez, director of the excavations, in an interview with El País. This one sentence, uttered amidst the olive trees of southwestern Spain, captures the remarkable coming together of past and present at the Cortijo Lobato site where a search for renewable energy came into conflict with a fortress almost five thousand years old and a mysterious Roman soldier’s grave.
The countryside around Almendralejo, Badajoz, had for centuries seemed nondescript, but hidden under the earth was a testament to the ingenuity of ancient times. When Acciona Energía was about to build an €80 million solar farm in 2021, initial surveys conducted by geophysical remote sensing techniques uncovered a massive Copper Age fortress. Tera S.L. archaeologists were called in, and what was unearthed afterward was a painstaking excavation which has since enchanted historians as well as engineers.
The fortress, known as Cortijo Lobato, remains a marvel of early military engineering. Its pentagonal center was surrounded by three concentric stone walls and 25 bastions, each of them a semicircular tower optimized to provide the best defensive firing angles. The walls initially 1.5 meters thick at the strongest points were defended by three ditches, some four meters wide and two meters deep, and a single, crab-like claw-shaped entrance that was just 70 centimeters wide. This imposing plan, situated on a hill that stands 314 meters above sea level, provided defenders with a bird’s-eye view of the plain around it, a tactical feature in an age of chronic warfare reminiscent of Los Millares’ sophistication.
Inside, archaeologists found a wealth of artifacts: arrowheads, axes, grinding stones, loom weights, and stone idols. These items suggest a sophisticated society, adept at mobilizing mass construction and surviving extended sieges. A water reservoir and remnants of cabins indicate the fortress was constructed not just for combat, but for survival of a besieged community.
However, even the strongest defenses would not secure survival. Carbon-14 dating of animal bones and widespread fire damage indicate a violent demise at about 2450 BCE. “One of the strongest indications that this was an intentional act is the burning of wooden doors embedded in the adobe walls.” These doors were far from other flammable materials, which suggests that the fire was not accidental, but rather the result of an assault on the fortification, The fortress stood abandoned, its history apparently lost to the ages.
The location sat quietly for almost three millennia until, near the second defensive ditch, a lone, shallow grave was discovered. The second- or third-century CE remains were of a male between 25 and 35 years old, buried face-down, his feet cut off, and a Roman pugio dagger laid across his back. The hasty burial of the grave and the position of the body indicate a burial with haste, secrecy, or dishonor. “This atypical burial suggests the soldier may have received a dishonorable interment—an unusual occurrence that raises questions about the circumstances surrounding his death,” Pérez said in an interview.
The dagger, which is from the late first century BCE, was an issued weapon for Roman legionaries, but its position on the back is extremely unusual. If the man was a soldier, he most likely served in Legio VII Gemina, the sole Roman legion based in Hispania then. Unlike their counterparts on distant borders, these soldiers were assigned to escort work and provincial policing instead of open war making the barbarity of the burial all the more mysterious.
The amputated feet and face-down orientation could suggest punishment for desertion or some other serious crime. According to Roman military law, fustuarium beating to death was the deserts’ destiny, and mutilation might be used as a dead man’s warning. “The cause of death, the unusual face-down burial with severed feet, and the placement of the pugio on the individual’s back remain ‘a real mystery,’ as the archaeologists described” in The Archaeologist. DNA testing of a tooth could still identify the soldier’s origins, possibly settling the question of whether he was an outsider or a casualty of internal discipline.
Regarding the solar project, Acciona Energía confronted a dilemma common to developers throughout Spain: balancing the pressing demand for renewable power with the legal and ethical obligation to safeguard cultural heritage. Spanish legislation is unambiguous Law 16/1985 concerning the Spanish Historical Heritage and a set of regional laws mandate that any construction scheme facing archaeological remains needs to stop and open up to professional investigation as specified in national and regional legislation. Acciona Energía, following best practice, paid for the entire archaeological survey and modified the design of the solar farm to prevent excavation of the site, an exemplary approach praised by heritage organizations and the renewable energy industry alike.
Geophysical remote sensing, in the form of ground-penetrating radar and magnetometry, was instrumental in charting the subsurface characteristics of Cortijo Lobato prior to any use of heavy machinery. Such non-destructive techniques are now routine in Spanish archaeological prospecting, eliminating the risk of inadvertent damage and making sure that ancient monuments are recorded by scientific standards before anything is done further.
This integration of new technology and old history is not specific to Almendralejo. All over Europe, solar and wind farms are being forced to include archaeological surveys in their planning stages. The result is a new model: renewable energy development as a driver of archaeological discovery and protection, not an opponent.
The tale of Cortijo Lobato and its Roman enigma continues. The fortress, with its intimidating defensive design and signs of violent death, tests the expectations of the Copper Age as a pacific age. The Roman burial, with its markers of dishonor and concealment, provides a glimpse into the stringent codes of military discipline that governed the empire’s remotest provinces. And the solar project, asked to adjust but not to forsake its purpose, shows how the newest infrastructure and the oldest heritage can coexist when led by science, law, and respect for the stories that lie beneath our feet.
