Archaeological walk through the valley of Pego
The term Pego is filled with archaeological remains that tell us in a way that the man from a very old age has lived in this valley benefitting from the mountain landscape, the proximity of the Mediterranean and the abundance of water.
The news about the prehistoric and historical stations in Pego has been the interdisciplinary study of traditional researchers and, lately, a new bakery of highly qualified archeologists. The first investigations were carried out by local scholars such as vicar Bernardino Sastre, chronicler Carmel Giner and national maestro Antonio Pérez Ramos. These are characterized by a lack of scientificity but they give us good toponymic and geographic references of the deposits. On the other hand, from the historiographical and archaeological science renovation, with more scientific guidelines of archaeological work, we find the studies of Pepa Pascual, Javier Martí, Josep Antoni Gisbert, Josep Torró and R. Azuar, among others.
The archaeological sites or remains constitute an integral part of the cultural heritage of the community, which makes it possible for us to know, even partially, cultural, social and material development in other historical periods, which justifies its protection and the limitations of any action that It can degrade them, according to article 166 of the Urban Planning Regulations.
Our journey will cover prehistoric times until the Middle Ages, so we will have to do it with good shoes to travel through this intense crucible of cultures and peoples in the same land: Pego and its valley.
To make our journey more idiosyncratic, we will follow a chronological method so that the visitor or curious reader can imagine in each period of the history that this writing passes.
Prehistory
The oldest prehistoric station is on the mountain ** Benirrames **, it belongs to the Middle Paleolithic, also called Musterian. Today, it falls to Oliva, but at that time it is necessary to take into account that the terms were not delimited as strictly as they are today. The site consists of a break of the vault of a cave habitat. Gravely deteriorated, its interest lies in the agglomeration of lithic material and animal remains scattered throughout the immediate area.
After the crisis of the Mesolithic, the neolithic man, already more sedentary, left his footprints in several places. In Ambra we find traces of Neolithic pottery, as in the ** Muntanyeta Verde ** and the Bullentó mountains. In the late Paleolithic and also during the Neolithic we find cave habitats in some of the Pegolines mountains. On the Camí del Carritx we come to the interior of the Sierra de Mostalla, where we find the Cueva del Ase, which is located on a slope of the ravine that, from the esplanade of the summit, walks to the plain. It is a habitat in a cave and the underground should also be practiced in it. It seems that the name of the cave refers to the quadruped animal of the family of the equids, but we do not know why it is called so. Similar chronology (5000-3000 BC) but much more unknown is the Cova de Xical or Potastenc, which is almost at the top on the path that goes underneath the cave to the N.O. from the mountain of Xical. Also unpublished, and in the same mountain, near a ravine attached to Barranc de las Cuevas, the Black Cave, with a majestic entrance towards the East, rests impassively.
Gradually, and thanks to the benevolent climate condition, the man went down to the plan to settle and develop into a production economy, based on agriculture, livestock and fishing.
During the Valencian Bronze period, the second major crisis of prehistoric Valencia was created, according to J. Aparicio, it was an era of intense and prolonged economic depression. [ 1 </ sup>] (# references) One of the most studied sites and important is part of this cultural association and is located in the marsh of Pego, in the area called El Pla next to the Camí dels Magranars. This site was discovered in the early 80’s by Salvador Climent and it is a depopulated bronze (4000-2000 BC) where ancient settlers, hunting and fishing, defended by a small surrounding wall. The surveys gave a good reference to the abundant ceramics, needles of bones and the possibility of the existence of a village with habitat structures of cabins with a roof of plant material and mud.
Of the bronze there are also references in a knoll called Tossal Ras, which is accessed from the road from Pego to Benidorm, in the port of Sagra. A very eroded mountain is observed, on top of which the remains of ceramics, various defensive structures, barquiform mills (hand mills) and boulders are abundant. During the bronze the ceramics were of low quality, it continued to be made by hand, and the peculiar cooking gave the similarity to a sandwich, with both red surface faces and in the interior an obscure color.
Towards the V-IV century BC. poem talk about the Iberian culture of Alicante. The most interesting exponents near us are the Xarpolar site in the Gallinera Valley (Margarida), Segària and Castellar d’Oliva. However, the reference par excellence of this culture is the arxiconeguda Dama d’Elx. Although in the term pegolí we observe remains of Iberian ceramics, no inhabitable set or exclusive site of this period has been located, except for the Muntanyeta Verde and ** Tossalet de Sorell **. The Muntanyeta Verde is 50 meters north of the marjal, it seems an islet that formerly should stand out from the waters of the place, a privileged place for exploitation and human refuge. It may be that a small wall would surround a small town during this time, however, the investigations are still not very conclusive. The Tossalet de Sorell is another paradisiac place that is near the Casa Motor de Sorell. Between the terraces, today of orange trees and before carob trees and olive trees, there is a small mound where the rock predominates throughout its surface; around it and in the falls we find abundant pottery, predominantly Iberian, Roman and Islamic.
Romanization of the territory
As stated by the archeologist and the greatest exponent and the archaeological study of classical antiquity in the Valencian Country J.A. Gisbert, the municipality of Pego, due to its considerable extension in the middle of the coastal plain, presents a strong imprint of Romanization. 2
Carmel Giner in 1966 already discovered graves in a plot of the game ** Penyalva **. The necropolis was defeated by the breaking down of the terraces, but a photograph has given us good evidence of burial burial with
