Iruña-Veleia

Veleia was a Roman town in Hispania, now located in the province of Álava, Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. The site is located in the municipality of Iruña de Oca, 10 kilometers west of Vitoria. The town was an important station on the Roman road ab Asturica Burdigalam that ran parallel to the coast of the Bay of Biscay. At its apogee, the city could have been inhabited by some five to ten thousand people, and apparently went through different cycles of prosperity and decline into the Early Middle Ages until it was finally abandoned. It has been argued (e.g. J.M.Lacarra) that the location of Iruña is actually the Victoriacum founded by Liuvigild in his campaigns against the Vascones (581), since only a very small portion of the actual town has been unearthed so far by archaeologists. The archaeological site of Iruña-Veleia is the most important from the Roman period in the Basque Country. It was alleged to contain the oldest known texts written in the Basque language as well as, allegedly, the oldest representation of the crucifixion of Jesus found to date, but later it was said that the findings were forgeries and then the archaeologist was found guilty of fraud. Other authors favored their genuinely ancient provenance, in agreement with the stratigraphic dating performed by the archaeologists who made the discoveries. In June 2020 the archaeologist who had made the claims

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).