In a press release sent to Lusa, this municipality of Castelo Branco explained that the excavations are taking place in the gold mines of the Roman mining complex of Mina da Presa and Covão do Urso.

"The works will allow us to know the whole structure of the territory and how daily life during the Roman occupation took place. For the first time, there will be direct and accurate dating, throughout ancient Lusitania, of Roman mines, and the mining complex is a remarkable testimony to the Roman mining activity of gold extraction in the northeast of the Roman province," the note said.

According to the information, the work is being carried out on two mining operations of a more comprehensive set of operations of the river Erges and Baságueda, and the structures now studied operated with water deposits that, in this case, were cut across to obtain a dating of the different levels that compose it, through the withdrawal of organic matter dated by Carbon 14.

In addition to the dating of the mines, a pollen analysis will also be carried out to help understand the paleoenvironmental structure of the region, i.e. what type of cultivation was recorded at the time, whether there were cattle, what type of trees were predominant, among other things.

The municipality of Penamacor also mentioned that another excavation was carried out in an old Roman camp of a temporary character and that it was destroyed with the advance of the mine.

"This camp was probably established by the army at the beginning of the mining works,” the note said.

The Penamacor Mines study project is led by Brais X. Currás, a researcher at the University of Coimbra, and by. Javier Sánchez-Palencia, a research professor at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, based in Spain.

He said the work was part of Aurifer Tagus' project, which aims to study the exploitation of gold mines during the Roman era in Lusitania, with funding from the "Proyectos Arqueológicos en el Exterior", of the Spanish government's ministry of culture.

"It also fits into the post-doctoral project of Brais X. Curras and integrates the CORVS project of the Spanish ministry of science and the IGAEDIS project, directed by the Universities of Coimbra and Nova de Lisboa,” the note said, adding “the municipality of Penamacor is a partner of the initiative, the result of the work that the municipality has been developing in the context of the enhancement and conservation of the Geosites that were identified on the date of the integration of this territory in the Naturtejo Geopark, which is part of the worldwide network of geoparks of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).”