2nd April 2019
The fish-sauce production centre of Boca do Rio
For two years now, the project "Vulnerability of complex production-networks at the Atlantic Coast of Roman Lusitania" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG TE 590/8-1) has been investigating the dependency of Roman fish sauce production in Hispania on the changing development of its direct environment. At the site of Boca do Rio the interdisciplinary cooperation between the Universities of Marburg, Cologne and Aachen (RWTH) is working locally within the PIPA-project "Boca do Rio, um sítio pesqueiro entre dois mares", led by João Pedro Bernardes (University of Algarve)1.
1 An overview on the ongoing excavation work gives Bernardes et. al. 2018.
2 Wilson 2006; Teichner 2016.
3 The other sites are Tróia (Setúbal) in the delta of the Sado river and Baelo Claudia (Bolonia) near the Straits of Gibraltar; Hermann et. al. 2018.
4 For historical sources see Bernardes – Medeiros 2016, 266; Geological evidence: Hindson et. al. 1996; Font et. al. 2013.
5 Allen 2003; Teichner et. al. 2014.
6 For details see Hermann et. al. 2018.
7 Which house a necropolis which may be connected to the settlement in the bay; Bernardes – Medeiros 2016.
8 Estácio da Veiga 1910; On the mosaics Teichner – Mañas Romero 2018.
Boca do Rio is located in the extreme southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, where together with the Straits of Gibraltar the highest density of fish-sauce-production sites in the whole Roman Empire is reached2. Like many other roman coastal settlements and small fishing sites of the region it is situated in a small bay right by the Atlantic sea. Two considerations led us to choose the site as one of three investigation sites3 in order to observe the dependencies mentioned above:
1) The recorded vulnerability of the site of being hit by natural disasters (or extreme wave events, EWE) in recent times. In 1755 a big earthquake and tsunami hit large parts of the coast of Portugal, an event which led to the eventual destruction of Lisbon and also attested Boca do Rio bay4. As such events are thought of having certain repetition rates similar events could be assumed to have taken place in prehistoric or early historic times as well.
2) Also long-term developments in coastal dynamics can be observed in the local deposits. That is the slow sedimentation of what is nowadays a (mostly) dry alluvial plain of three small rivers (port. Ribeira). The conversion from an open, marine body of water to the current state was a long progress which started in antiquity and could have had a drastic impact on the roman settlement situated at the shore of the estuary5.
To enable the detection of environmentally forced changes within the settlement the identification of certain ‘key features’ at the crossroads of settlement and its environment was crucial.
Therefore several field campaigns exerting geophysical prospection and excavation were conducted and the whole accessible area was investigated6. This allowed not only the creation of a new idea of the complexity and overall composition of the fish-processing site of Boca do Rio, but also the identification of certain decisive indicators; results that can be summed up as follows:
The settlement lies in the eastern slope of a dune leaning against the local limestone cliffs7. It was built on top of the roman era dune and was since covered by the growing dune. In its southernmost region right by the sea was a living area, or pars urbana, situated, as already described by S. P. M. Estácio da Veiga8. Due to their exposed position the majority of those structures have already been destroyed by the sea.
To the north the continuation of the settlement consists mainly of conglomerates of various small scale workshops. Those follow the design known from various other fish-sauce production sites with central courtyards around which the vats are arranged.
Nombre y apellido: Florian Hermann
Institución: Philipps Universität Marburg
Cargo actual: Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (Empleado científico)
Bachelor of Arts “Archäologische Wissenschaften” Philipps-Universität Marburg (2016)
R. Hidalgo Prieto, I. Carrasco Gómez, F. Hermann, F. Teichner, El proyecto de investigación arqueológica en la Cañada Honda de Itálica. Planteamientos, objetivos y primeros resultados. Antiquitas 30, 2018, 45-61 (en prensa).
K. Paul, F. Hermann, F. Teichner, K. Reicherter, H. Brückner, Roman Garum-Production in Lusitania –a geoarchaeological approach. In: CAA conference proceedings Cologne/Bonn 2018 (en prensa).
F. Hermann, J. P. Bernardes, F. Teichner, R. Soares, Boca do Rio (Algarve, Portugal). A centre of export oriented ‘garum’ production on the shore of roman Lusitania. In: CAA conference proceedings Cologne/Bonn 2018 (en prensa).
A. Gradim, F. Hermann, F. Teichner, "Radiografar" o terreno para melhor o gerir: o exemplo das prospeções geofísicas realizadas em sítios de Alcoutim (resultados preliminares). Al Madam 20, 2016, 35-40.
F. Hermann, P. Mertl, F. Teichner, Geophysikalische Testmessung an der westgotischen Stadtmauer von Italica (Santiponce). In: Kleine Schriften aus dem Vorgeschichtlichen Seminar Marburg 61 = F. Teichner (Hrsg.) Provinzialrömische Archäologie in Hispanien 1 (Marburg, 2015).
PROYECTOS DE INVESTIGACIÓN, PARTICIPACIÓN EN
DFG TE590/8-1 “Vulnerabilität komplexer römischer Wirtschaftssysteme”; Responsable: Felix Teichner (Univ. Marburg), in cooperación con Univ. Köln, RWTH Aachen, Univ. de Algarve, 2017-2020
“Archäologische Landesforschung”; Responsable: Felix Teichner (Univ. Marburg), in cooperación con HessenArchäologie (Oficina de Hesse para la preservación de la memoria histórica), constantemente
HAR2015-67810-P “Espacio privado y espacio de servicio en Villa Adriana (Tivoli, Roma) e ltalica (Santiponce, Sevilla)”; Responsable: Rafael Hidalgo Prieto (Univ. Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla), 2017-2018
“Proyecto Berisco”; Responsables Ángel Villa Valdes (Oviedo) y Ruben Montes Lopez (Gijón), 2017-2018
DAAD -Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst: Geoarchaeology in the Croatian part of the Adriatic Sea, in cooperation with the Croatian Institute of Archaeology, Zagreb, 2016-17
“Hoëdic -Los últimos cazadores y recolectores costeros de la Europa atlántica ante la muerte: Estudio interdisciplinar de la necrópolis mesolítica de Hoëdic (Morbihan, Francia)”; Responsable: Pablo Arias Cabal (Univ. Santander), 2018
“Warscapes: documentando la presencia militar romana en La Campiña (Sasamón, Burgos)”; Responsables: Manuel Fernández-Götz (Univ. Edinburgh), José Costa García (Vrije University Amsterdam/Univ. Santiago de Compostela), Jesús García Sánchez (Univ. Leiden), Felix Teichner (Univ. Marburg), 2017
Miembro del dArV (Deutscher Archäologen-Verband e.V.)