Notable person

Antonio Rodríguez Colmenero, Archaeologist of Lucenza and Aquis Querquennis

Antonio Rodríguez Colmenero (Lucenza, Cualedro, 1936) is a professor of Ancient History and archaeologist, driving force behind the excavations of the Roman camp of Aquis Querquennis on the River Limia, and Pedra Alta Prize 2018.

Born: Lucenza (Cualedro), 1936
Profession: professor of Ancient History and archaeologist
Site: Aquis Querquennis, Roman camp
Pedra Alta Prize: 2018

Antonio Rodríguez Colmenero was born in 1936 in Lucenza, in the municipality of Cualedro, one of the large villages of south-east Ourense lying between A Limia and Monterrei, on the slopes of the Larouco. He studied at the Seminary of Ourense and served as a priest for ten years; he later married Covadonga, also a historian. He studied Philosophy and Letters in Valladolid, where he taught Ancient History and defended his thesis in 1975, and continued at the universities of Deusto (associate), Oviedo and Santiago de Compostela (tenured), with teaching stays in Heidelberg, Cologne, Macerata and Rome II Tor Vergata ^[1].

He is a full member of the Royal Galician Academy of Fine Arts, a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of History, vice-president of the Fundación Aquae Quarquennae Via Nova and director of the Grupo Arqueolóxico Larouco and of the journal of the same name, which carries a section titled «Teima no noso». His book Galicia meridional romana gathers his work on Romanisation ^[1]^[2].

Aquis Querquennis

The work he is most closely associated with is the Roman camp of Aquis Querquennis, at Portoquintela (Bande), on the bank of the River Limia, now flooded for much of the year by the As Conchas reservoir. Colmenero, who had already excavated at Lucenza and at the hillforts of A Saceda (Cualedro) and Novás (Xinzo), came to Portoquintela in the mid-1970s and grasped the importance of the site, which López Cuevillas had excavated in the 1920s, and argued that it was a Roman camp against the opinion of many experts. He persuaded the reservoir’s owner, Fenosa, to authorise a resumption of excavation in 1975 ^[2]^[1].

More than forty years later, the visitable site covers 26,700 square metres and was active between AD 74 and 117, controlling the building of Roman road XVIII, the Via Nova that linked Bracara Augusta (Braga) with Asturica Augusta (Astorga) and crossed A Limia. Visitors can see two of the four gates, stretches of wall and the ditch, the principia (headquarters building), the horrea (granaries), a possible hospital, the latrines and five troop barracks; each housed a century of 80 soldiers with their centurion. Santiago Ferrer has directed the excavations in recent years under Colmenero’s guidelines, and Colmenero secured the funding (from the Ministry of Culture at first, then the Xunta, the Provincial Council and private bodies such as the Barrié Foundation and Fenosa). He also excavated the nearby mansio viaria and promoted the two-floor Interpretation Centre, which explains the site, the Via Nova and the history of the Limia Valley from prehistory to Christianisation ^[2]. See also Limici and Romanisation.

Pedra Alta Prize 2018

The Museo da Limia awarded him the Pedra Alta Prize on 29 September 2018 for his work on the Via Nova and the lands of the River Limia. The presentation took place on 24 November 2018 at the Museo da Limia, with a laudatio by Manuel Seoane Feijóo and a masterclass in which Colmenero reviewed the shaping of the north-west under the Roman army; that day he visited the Biblioteca da Limia, to which he donated a selection of his work, and from whose window the Larouco (1,527 m) can be seen ^[1]. See Pedra Alta Prize.