Rebeca Blanco-Rotea

The church of Santa Comba de Bande and early medieval Iberian architecture: new chronological results

Abstract The church of Santa Comba de Bande in north-west Spain has long been considered a model for regional Late Antique and early medieval architecture. Controversy, however, has recently emerged concerning its construction date. Is it a ‘Visigothic’ (seventh century) or ‘Mozarabic’ (ninth to tenth centuries) church? The combination of stratigraphic data with absolute dating methods has now provided a date of AD 751–789 for construction of the church. This result has historical and architectural implications: Santa Comba de Bande represents an extremely early example of Mozarabic architecture, and demonstrates the dynamic circulation of influences between the Islamic south and Christian north in eighth-century Iberia.

Reusing stones in medieval churches: a multidisciplinary approach to San Martiño de Armental (NW Spain)

This paper presents an interdisciplinary methodology to help better understand the evolution of the use and reuse of stone material in the construction sequence of historical buildings. A combination of petrological analyses, stratigraphic analyses of walls, geochemical characterisation and absolute dating of mortars using optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon dating, the study of written sources and photogrammetry is applied to the case study of San Martiño de Armental, a rural parish church from NW Iberia. Results reveal a much more complex history and evolution than previously thought for this church, with the discovery of the remains of a tenth century AD building still standing in some parts of the building. This first church was already made of reused ashlars from one or several unknown buildings. Later Romanesque and modern phases still reuse some of these ashlars while incorporating new stone material. All the stones and mortars of the church seem to have local origin, although there are differences in their composition depending on the construction phase they belong to. Basing on these results, we will discuss in the last part of the paper how the reuse of materials can become an interesting reflection of the different construction techniques used and the level of economic investment made by those who promoted the work.