Study identifies caliber and provenance of projectiles from the Second Punic War

This type of projectile was used in a coordinated manner, along with torsion artillery, to clear static defenses and parapets during the Roman army's attack on Iliturgi, according to information from a UJA communiqué.

Through the analysis of lead isotopes and the use of the analytical logic algorithm AMALIA, which allowed comparing the samples with the international database ORACLE, containing more than 150,000 records, the team managed to reconstruct the lead supply routes used by armies (Roman and Carthaginian) and Iberian populations.

On the one hand, the projectiles registered on the Baecula battlefield, as well as some of those registered in the attack on Iliturgi only two years later, present a high isotopic heterogeneity, resulting from the mixture of lead ore from both the Linares mining district and the Cartagena district.

Lead from the mining district of Linares was used repeatedly by the inhabitants of Iliturgi in everyday objects, such as weights for fishing nets, as well as in the manufacture of some of the projectiles with which they tried to repel the Roman attack.

As for larger-caliber projectiles, they all have the same isotopic signature, which associates them with the mining district of Cartagena, confirming that the Roman army commanded by Scipio the African, refueled with weapons and raw materials Carthaginian after the seizure of the peninsular punitive capital, Qart-Hadasht, in the year 209 BC, as reported by the preserved textual sources.

Finally, lead projectiles documented in the Puente Tablas oppidum have non-peninsular isotope signatures compatible with North African deposits (Tunisia), which may indicate the presence or territorial influence of North African contingents among the Iberian communities of the Upper Guadalquivir at the end of the third century BC.