Yacimiento Arqueológico del Rectorado de la Universidad de Málaga

The Yacimiento Arqueológico del Rectorado de la Universidad de Málaga occupies the former Casa de Correos y Telégrafos, today the university's rectorate. Excavation came with the rehabilitation works that turned the building to that use. The dig reached Phoenician layers holding materials older than the sixth century B.C., long the accepted date for the founding of Malaka. The site is accessible for wheelchair users.

Researchers from the University of Málaga have since analysed the deepest levels and pushed the city's Phoenician origins back to the mid-seventh century B.C. That makes these materials the oldest known from Phoenician Málaga. Ceramic tableware, bones and marine shells formed the study's material. The team set them against finds from Cerro del Villar and the Castillo de Doña Blanca in Cádiz province. Carbon fourteen dating, carried out with an American laboratory, anchored the revised chronology. Fragments of a Greek amphora show the Phoenicians importing oil from the central Mediterranean.

A single handmade pot carries the most human part of the story. It points to local people, women above all, cooking inside the Phoenician community. Culinary traditions of this kind let researchers trace how the two populations merged, one meal at a time.