Iruña-Veleia
At its apogee, the city could have been inhabited by some five to ten thousand people,[citation needed] and apparently went through different cycles of prosperity and decline into the Early Middle Ages until it was finally abandoned.
In June 2020 the archaeologist who had made the claims, Eliseo Gil, was pronounced guilty of fraud and connivance with an external collaborator in presenting a false report.
The court ruled that the pieces had been altered "by himself or through third persons with contemporary incisions to simulate that they contained inscriptions of the same ancient age as the objects in which they were engraved and that they possessed a historical and cultural value of which they were devoid".
The houses from this period, rectangular and round with adobe walls and thatched roofs, are similar to those found at the nearby site of Atxa (Vitoria).
[10] Alicia Canto, professor of classical archaeology and epigraphy at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, cast doubts over the capacity of such committee to elucidate the veracity of the sherd inscriptions based on linguistic grounds, as well as highlighting the contradictory positions shown by some of its members while noting that some claimed texts were "beyond salvation".
[1][13] The sponsors of the project (Euskotren) also brought charges against the archaeological team, but the case was dismissed, and only the lawsuit filed by the provincial government of Alava remained in force.
Eliseo Gil has repeatedly denied the accusations against him, defended the authenticity of his findings, and requested that decisive physical tests be performed on the pieces to scientifically resolve the issue.
The court ruled that the pieces had been altered "by himself or through third persons with contemporary incisions to simulate that they contained inscriptions of the same ancient age as the objects in which they were engraved and that they possessed a historical and cultural value of which they were devoid".
[16] In disagreement with the opinions of some members of the Scientific Advisory Committee constituted by the Provincial Government of Alava, positing that the graffiti found at Iruña-Veleia are recent forgeries or cannot be ancient, a number of scholars in different fields, including archaeology, epigraphy, ancient history, linguistics, and Egyptology, from four countries, have made public their views favorable to their authenticity through reports, articles, books, and conference presentations.
