The Archaeological Museum of Linares exhibits 'La huella del agua' until May

The Museo Arqueológico de Linares, under the Consejería de Cultura, Patrimonio Histórico y Deporte, hosts the exhibition 'La huella del agua: arquitectura y paisaje', which can be visited until May 2027. The show is part of International Landscape Day and proposes a dialogue between past and present, with historical architecture and archaeological objects on one hand, and contemporary installations and graphic documents on the other.

The archaeological materials on display come from the museum's collection and were recovered in recent excavations. The contents of three cisterns from the city of Cástulo —known provisionally as those of the oysters, the columns and the well— are exhibited in as many tubular display cases 90 centimetres high and 50 in diameter, placed like a wellhead in front of the corresponding image. Inside, the public will see objects such as two marble heads or a small hoard of bronze coins in the cistern of the columns, as well as buckets with drinks bottles lost decades ago in that of the well. A fourth display case gathers hydriae, amphorae and other water containers, together with bowls and cups of table ceramics or a glass bottle of probable ritual use, simulating the trough shape of the basin of the Roman fountain where they were found. It also includes an image of the lead pipe that carried water to that fountain.

The documentation of the show relies on the graphic archive of the Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico, where the evolution of the landscape in the archaeological area of Cástulo is recorded: from the pioneering report by José Morón in 1992 and the approach of Juan Carlos Cazalla Montijano in 2011 to the work of Anna Elías Manén and Arturo Cuenca Villén, of Producciones La Pinza, in the summer of 2023. Based on the photogrammetric restitution of the three cisterns, Francisco Arias de Haro presents an artistic perspective of each hydraulic construction. In the centre of the exhibition space is the sculpture 'El corazón azul del agua', created by Sotte (José Antonio Soto) for this show from plastic waste from water bottles. The exhibition also includes the work 'Lo del agua', by Francisco J. Alguacil Díaz. The territorial delegate of Cultura, Patrimonio Histórico y Deporte, José Ayala, has visited the show.