page_title: Carteia
section_title: Roman and medieval period
hierarchical_section_title: Carteia / Roman and medieval period
caption_attribution_description: Español: Plano del yacimiento de Carteia (San Roque, Andalucía, España), alrededores y detalle de alguna de las estructuras visibles.
context_page_description: Carteia was a Phoenician and Roman town at the head of the Bay of Gibraltar in Spain. It was established at the most northerly point of the bay, next to the town of San Roque, about halfway between the modern cities of Algeciras and Gibraltar, overlooking the sea on elevated ground at the confluence of two rivers, nowadays called Guadarranque and Cachon.
  According to Strabo, it was founded around 940 BC as the trading settlement of Kʿrt. The area had much to offer a trader; the hinterland behind Carteia, in the modern south of Andalusia, was rich in wood, cereals, oranges, lemons, lead, iron, copper and silver. Dyes were another much sought-after commodity, especially those from the murex shellfish, used to make the prized Tyrian purple. Strabo and Pomponius Mela, mention that some believe that Carteia used to be the Tartessos. Pliny the Elder writes that Carteia was called by the Greeks Tartessos.
  The town's strategic location meant that it played a significant role in the wars between Carthage and the Roman Republic in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC.
context_section_description: Livy records that in 171 BC, the Roman Senate was petitioned by a group of Romano-Spanish people, the sons of Roman soldiers and Spanish women. Although they were of Roman descent they were not regarded as Roman citizens, nor were they allowed to marry Roman citizens. The Senate responded by elevating Carteia to the status of a colonia (Roman colony) and granting around 4,000 Romano-Spanish people the right to live there and receive a grant of land on a similar basis to Roman colonists. 
  The existing inhabitants were permitted to remain there, while all of the inhabitants were given the right to marry Roman citizens and to carry on trade with Romans. This marked a significant innovation for Rome's overseas colonies; the Carteians were the first outside Italy to receive a civic status known as the Latin Rights, halfway between being a non-citizen provincial and a full Roman citizen. Other cities in Spain were later granted a similar status.
  The Colonia Libertinorum Carteia (Freedmen's Colony of Carteia) prospered for another 580 years under Roman rule.  It grew to become a substantial city which served as a centre for the export of local wines, shipped in amphorae fired in large kilns found on the site, and the manufacture of garum fish sauce. Carteia acquired a mint, amphitheatre, temples and port, and played a significant role in late Roman Republican affairs. Pompey made it his western base for his campaign against Mediterranean pirates in 68 BC. His sons Gnaeus and Sextus raised an army there in 45 BC before being defeated by Julius Caesar at the Battle of Munda. While Gnaeus was captured and executed, Sextus escaped via Carteia's port and fled north to the Pyrenees.
  Little is known of the remainder of Carteia's Roman history, but it appears to have been sacked by the Visigoths around 409 AD, by which time it was probably already in decline.  Nonetheless, archaeological evidence shows that urban life continued there into the medieval period. The foundations of an early Christian basilica have been found, a Visigothic necropolis exists near one of the Roman temples, and Byzantine remains discovered at the site show its continued occupation when Carteia was incorporated into the Byzantine province of Spania during the 6th-7th centuries. 
  In the 9th century, after the Umayyad conquest of Hispania, Islamic sources referred to the town – which was probably not much more than a village by then – as Qartayanna or Cartagena. The Marinids constructed a tower nearby, known today as the Torre de Cartagena, using stones from the ruined Roman walls.
caption: Plan of the site
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