Sagunto Castle is an important archaeological and architectural heritage located in the Valencian Community (Spain) few kilometers north of the city of Valencia. The area of Sagunto has been occupied at least since the 5th century BC and both the city and the Castle was interested by an intricate history since the Roman Republican period to the Contemporary Period, passing through the Hannibal destruction during the Second Punic War, the Islamic occupation and the Napoleonic Wars. In the last years, Sagunto Castle was declared Heritage of Cultural Interest by the public authorities.

ArchaeChemis collaborates with the Archaeological Museum and the Municipality of Sagunto since 2015,  carrying out for the first time multidisciplinary research in order to increase the knowledge about Sagunto and  valorise its important cultural heritage. 

Finished work

• First application of smartphone colorimetry on cistern waterproofing mortar from the Castle of Sagunto published by Inżynieria Mineralna (https://doi.org/10.29227/IM-2024-01-21).

• Review paper on the works carried out up to 2020 published by Arse.

• Chemical analysis of the sandstone ashlars of Sagunto Castle. Results were published by Archivo de Prehistoria Levantina.

• Analysis of amphorae from the collection of the Archaeological Museum of Sagunto. The amphorae were analysed by spectroscopic techniques (pXRF, ICP-MS and FT-NIR) and by electrochemistry (VIMP) to determine the provenance of unknown fragments. The work was published by Applied Clay Science (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clay.2020.105857).

• Study of the Iberian-Roman bronze statuettes through portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. The results were published in Radiation Physics and Chemistry (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radphyschem.2019.02.031)

• Analysis of the mortars of Sagunto Circus area and of the Railroad Station emergency excavation for chronological purposes, presented at the 21st Meeting of the Spanish Society of Analytical Chemistry (5-7 September 2017, Valencia - Spain) and published in the Journal of Spectroscopy (https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/9736547).

• Study of the limestone and dolostone ashlars of the Castle's buildings to understand construction phases, identify raw materials and detect decay phenomena. The results were presented at the XL Colloquium Spectroscopicum Internationale (11-16 June 2017, Pisa - Italy) and published in the Journal of Archaeological Science - Reports (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.03.017).

• Study of the Castle's mortars, whose preliminary results were presented at the 11th Congress of Iberic Archaeometry (14-16 October 2015, Évora - Portugal) and whose final results were published in Microchemical Journal in 2017 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.microc.2017.02.009). The aims of the study were the improvement of our comprehension of the contruction phases and the development of an indirect chronology method based on rare earth element analysis.