The accesses or natural entrances to the Caves of l’Espluga are located in the Font Major Quarter, an area located in the northwest sector of the municipality of l’Espluga, in which data and remains are known that cover a wide chronological spectrum. In this sense, we must emphasize that, according to the multiple documented evidences, the caves of l’Espluga would have been occupied and/or frequented uninterruptedly from the Middle Paleolithic to the present day.
In the Font Major cave, we must highlight the archaeological interventions carried out by Salvador Vilaseca in the 1960s. The Font Major Cave, immediately after its discovery in 1957, suffered a series of aggressions that irreversibly damaged it as an archaeological site. However, Salvador Vilaseca, in specific interventions carried out in the 1960s, recovered part of the archaeological record, which served to highlight the importance of this site in relation to various uses or occupations:
- On the one hand, the site documented in the Sala del Lago (Room P), which includes ceramic materials datable to the Late Bronze-Early Iron and the Iberian period. Some findings that surely respond to the practice of ritual activities related to the waters and the source of the subway river.
- The location of a cache of bronze objects located on the E-SE side of the Sala de la Mamella, about 50 m from the entrance.
- The excavation of the residual cores that remained attached to the walls of the cave (E-SE and W-NW) after the systematic and uncontrolled emptying of the sediments at the entrance of the cave, which yielded multiple remains from the Neolithic period.
On the other hand, it should also be taken into account that in 1993, within the framework of the conditioning works related to the museumization of the cave, fauna remains belonging to the species Dicerorhinus mercki, Equus caballus, Crocuta spelea and Cervus elaphus (three pieces of rhinoceros teeth, horse teeth, two pieces of hyena teeth, several pieces of teeth and fragments of deer antler) were found about 100 meters from the entrance of the cave. This faunal association was chronologically attributed to the Middle Pleistocene or early Upper Pleistocene. Quartz remains were also collected, which were interpreted as a possible anthropogenic contribution (Genera 1995).
As for the Cueva de la Vila, it is certain that at the archaeological level we know some data concerning the medieval period. In fact, in the excavations carried out in 1999 in the interior of the Cueva de la Villa, the existence of a medieval wall associated with a lime pavement and a chimney was documented, confirming the use of the cave as a domestic space. Among the set of materials recovered in the levels of use associated with the pavement in question, the discovery of a belt buckle dating from the 13th-14th centuries stands out. In addition, in the case of the Cueva de la Vila, there is also the presence of enclosure walls at the two entrances, walls which, due to their typology, seem to have been clearly built in the medieval period; on the one hand, a thick wall attached to the main entrance, and on the other, two enclosure walls that are preserved at the north entrance. Therefore, everything seems to indicate that the Cueva de la Villa would have been used as a place of shelter and refuge during the Visigothic and Muslim periods and probably also during the repopulation of the area during the 11th-12th centuries.
On the other hand, it should be noted that the entire area that extends from the Milans-Francolí riverbed to the area currently occupied by C/ Almendros, C/ Castell, C/ Bellavista, C/ Templaris and C/ Capuig, is one of those that has provided more data concerning the occupation of late-antique and medieval times. In fact, the very name of Spelunca, which the repopulators identified with the place from the mid-11th century, seems to reveal the type of population that existed during the early Middle Ages in this area. In this sense, it has been suggested that the set of caves under the cliffs of the castle (Ametllers street), the disappeared cave of Els Escanyats, as well as the Cueva de la Vila itself, would have become spaces reoccupied as places of habitat in the stage prior to the reconquest (Carreras 2002).
In 2011, under the direction of Marta Fontanals Torroja (URV-IPHES), a preventive archaeological intervention was carried out in which part of the sedimentary deposit between the mouth of the Font Major cave and the adjoining mouth of the Villa cave was excavated. The reason was the creation of a passage to connect the two cavities, which had been isolated in the past due to a landslide and the subsequent accumulation of sediments. . Almost two meters of sedimentary deposit were excavated, highlighting the appearance of ancient Neolithic levels with abundant faunal remains and material culture, and a base level with lithic industry that, with doubts, could be attributed to the Upper Paleolithic.
The finding that, at least in the area of the mouth of the Font Major cave, a part of the sedimentary deposit was preserved with remains of Neolithic and possibly Upper Paleolithic occupations led the IPHES to regain interest in the site. Thus, in 2018, and as a result of the excellent prospects in the identification of prehistoric livestock practices, offered by the first stable isotope analyses carried out on samples of domestic fauna from the Early Neolithic levels excavated in 2011, it was decided to incorporate the site into the IPHES research project “Paleoenvironmental evolution and prehistoric settlement in the basins of the Francolí, Gaià, Siurana and streams of the Camp de Tarragona (2018-2021)”. This project is part of the four-year research projects in archaeology of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya, and is the principal investigator Josep Maria Vergès Bosch. As part of this project, IPHES incorporated the GRESEPIA group of the Rovira i Virgili University to collaborate in the study of the protohistoric levels, especially those documented by Salvador Vilaseca in the Lake room, which this researcher called Room P. The first intervention in the framework of the IPHES research project was carried out between October 14 and November 8, 2019, under the technical direction of Josep Maria Vergès Bosch and Carlos Tornero Dacasa. During this campaign two coves were made, one of 2 x 1 meters in the access of the Vila cave, adjacent to the mouth of the Font Major cave, covered with a brick vault, which we will call S1, and another of 1 x 1 meters in the corner of the area of “the encounter”, also in the Vila cave, where formerly there was the recreation of an archaeological excavation, called S2. The S1 cove was later enlarged to a surface area of 3 x 1.5 meters.
In parallel, and within the framework of the same project, an intervention was carried out in the Lake room, from 21 to 31 October 2019 under the direction of Ivan Cots Serret. The fortuitous discovery, during the course of this campaign, of a set of Paleolithic engravings in the area of the gatoneras de cal Palletes, made by Josep Maria Vergès Bosch, triggered a series of new interventions not foreseen in the initial project.
Thus, from December 11 to 18, 2019, surveys were carried out in the Font Major cave and in the Castle cave to determine whether there were other areas with prehistoric engravings that needed to be protected.
In three periods, from January 7 to February 28, 2020, from March 4 to May 1, 2020, this one interrupted by the confinement and mobility restrictions derived from the Covid-19 pandemic, and from June 17 to September 4, 2020, the documentation and cataloguing of the engravings located in the gatoneras of the Palletes, and a cove in the gallery closest to the Lake room, aimed at documenting the stratigraphy and extracting samples for dating, were carried out. Josep Maria Vergès Bosch was in charge of the direction of the prospections and of these interventions.