The rediscovery of a funerary stele has provided new evidence of a lost Celtiberian City beneath the municipality of Borobia in the province of Soria, Spain.
The story began in 1971, when three Roman funerary stelae were uncovered on the outskirts of Borobia. Carved on both sides with depictions of horsemen with spears and shields, the stelae were taken to the Numantine Museum in Soria.
A missing section from one stele was later unearthed and stored in a local farm building, where it remained unnoticed for over half a century until it was rediscovered by researchers from the University of Zaragoza’s Institute of Heritage and Humanities.
A study of the stele, published in Archivo Español de Arqueología, concludes that the complete monument would have been roughly 140 centimetres in height and was erected outside the oppidum of Virovia, a settlement long considered lost.
The inscriptions commemorate two individuals, Sempronius Aninius and Lucius Sempronius Ambato, and suggest that comrades-in-arms financed the funerary monuments of fallen colleagues.
Scholars Marta Chordá Pérez, Borja Díaz Ariño, and Alberto Jiménez Carrera argue that the imagery blends Latin and indigenous Celtiberian traditions, reflecting the integration of local auxiliary cavalry into Rome’s military forces during the early empire.
Until now, Virovia was known only from bronze coins bearing the name Uirouia and showing the traditional Celtiberian iconography of a galloping horseman with a lance. Several such coins have been found in and around Borobia, along with Celtiberian ceramics unearthed during test excavations at the ruined Borobia Castle.
Together, these finds strongly suggest that the ancient city once occupied El Cabezo, a defensible hill overlooking the village. Its position between the Roman cities of Bilbilis and Numantia, and its access to mineral resources, would have made the site strategically valuable in antiquity.
Researchers believe Virovia vanished during the Flavian era, becoming absorbed into the Roman municipal system. However, its name, and perhaps its memory, survived through its coinage. The discovery of the reconstructed stele now provides the first clear archaeological link between Borobia and the elusive Celtiberian settlement.
Header Image Credit : Numantine Museum / M.ª C. Sopena
Sources : El Pais
