TORCVLARIVM DA VILLA DA ALDEIA DO GRILO (SERPA, ALENTEJO, PORTUGAL): DADOS ARQUEOGRÁFICOS/THE TORCVLARIVM IN THE VILLA OF ALDEIA DO GRILO (SERPA, ALENTEJO, PORTUGAL): ARCHAEOGRAPHIC DATA

During the Roman period, the Alentejo's inland were intensively farmed, having the villa a prevailing role in supporting and extending this economic strategy. However, most of the archeological investigation in this region has focused on the residential area of the villae, which has delayed a systematic vision of the organization and structuring of these organic units as a whole. The preventive archeological work promoted by EDIA, being water supply infrastructures, affect areas which are topographically distinct of those favoured for the settling of the pars urbana of the villae. Thus, these works have been producing new and decisive data for the understanding of the technical and economic aspects of that economic production. Despite the preventive nature of the intervention held in the site of Aldeia do Grilo, it was possible to restore a sequence of successive architectural reformulations of the part of a building subject to intervention. Among the structures excavated, we highlight the torcularium: a lacus, square-shapped, made with opus signinum; part of a pressing platform built with mortar and ceramics; and a communication channel between the two structures. Though the preservation of the archaeological record and the preventive nature of the excavation conditioned the access to a rigorous date for the construction and usage of the structure, the ceramics (particularly amphoric) found within the lacus, date its abandonment to the half of the 4th/ beginnings of the 5th century A.D.. The increase of archaeological work in non-housing areas of the villae contributes to the comprehension of the techno-economical and social aspects of the Alentejo's roman occupation, namely: the functioning of the technical structures and their chronological evolution; the linkage between the different parts of the villae; the importance of the technical areas in the exploitation of the fundus and in the frame of the economic strategies of the rural roman world.