habitat rupestre.pdf - Società Friulana di Archeologia

J. Llopis Verdú, A. Torres Barchino, J. Serra Lluch, A. García Codoñer, J. L. Higón CalvetJames. According to tradition, it was built above a small cavein which they discovered a small shrine dedicated to San JuanBautista (Saint John the Baptist) and in the interior, they foundthe lifeless body of a hermit called Juan de Atarés. The churchwas thus erected on top of a former “sacred” grotto, somethingthat would be repeated throughout history across the whole ofthe Peninsula. The grotto forming the foundation of the overlyingconstructed architecture.A religiousness, in short, appropriate for the particular timeand place, that would lead to a form of excavated architecture,which most likely sometimes made use of former Visigoth excavations,on which to build churches, shrines and hermitagesthat reflect, as few buildings from that time were able to do,the harshness of a world in perpetual confrontation and thesearch for a new form of religiousness.Repopulating the borderlandsThe expansion of this new religiousness and the search for isolationfrom the world by the hermits and anchorites during theEarly Middle Ages was the expression of a new social reality:that of the migration from the north as the Christian kingdomscontinued to expand southwards at the cost of the Muslimkingdoms and favoured, or directly led to, the reoccupying ofabandoned lands by the new settlers.These new territories were inhabited by very poor families,who experienced some very harsh living conditions. They settledin and around abandoned religious buildings or on ruggedland that could be easily defended. Furthermore, the possibilityof directly excavating into the rocky shelters meantthat building work could take place without the need for anybuilding materials. In incredibly harsh conditions and with analmost complete lack of materials, the return to troglodytismor cave dwelling was more than just a convenient solution, itwas the only solution.But also occurring at this time was a converging migratorymovement coming in the other direction, namely the Mozarabsettlers who had been subject to religious persecution and hadleft their original homes, moved north and settled in the areasimmediately between the two opposing kingdoms. They migratedand brought with them their own priests and erectedtheir own temples and communities based on their own particularcultural, and architectural influences. From this commonVisigoth and Muslim heritage came the generalised useof horseshoe arches (also known as Moorish or Keyhole), notonly in their constructed architecture but also in their excavatedarchitecture. This would give a certain formal unity toall the cave and semi-cave structures in the Peninsula.In both cases, the populations that settled there erected bothdwellings and buildings that fulfilled some religious purpose.At a time when religion was almost the only consolation andcould be found in all aspects of existence and of daily life, thenew populations erected their churches and dug their cemeteries.Given the lack of historical documentation to help us tolearn about and better understand their way of life, this modestexcavated architecture is almost the only testament left behindfrom those times. A way of life which, as the Conquest progressed,would disappear, due to the progressive redistributionof lands between the Nobility and the Church, and thegradual move southwards of the border separating Christianand Muslim worlds.Fig. 6-7 Eremitorio de Cueva Andrés: current status and reconstructionaccording to Padilla Lapuente (2003)Fig. 8-9 Rupestrian Church of San Juan in Socueva (Arredondo, Cantabria)109volumeRicerca_OK_2012-11-15.indd 109 16/11/2012 15:02:03