Abstract
Rising sea levels, along with other biological and human factors, have increased erosion rates at a number of important sites located along the Atlantic coastline. Project GaltFish implemented a series of contingency measures to record some of these sites before they degraded further or totally disappeared. This process involved detailed photogrammetric recording of some of the sites under threat over a set period of time. One of the sites selected for this project was Sobreira (Vigo, Galicia): a Roman fish-salting factory which was partially destroyed by building activity in the 1980s and the remains of which are under threat from marine erosion and human action. In order to study the site, two photogrammetric models were created to examine the effect of erosive processes across the course of one year. The results illustrate that photogrammetry is an efficient tool for recording and analysing the issue of erosion. The data compiled helped in designing additional action in the factory, which was subject to a rescue excavation to record and help protect the site from further damage. This paper presents the results of this project, as well as the methodology used to produce the models, the data generated and their analysis. It is argued that the methodology can be used to collect and analyse data from other sites, and that this data could inform the political/administrative decision-making processes which concern the future management and preservation of archaeological sites under threat.
Highlights
The presence of a large number of factories for the processing of marine resources on the Atlantic coastline of ancient Gallaecia led, in 2016, to the launching of the research project GaltFish—Salt and Fish Salting in Ancient Gallaecia: looking for the origins of the Galician canned fish industry
The monitoring of the erosive action of the sea was not one of the main proposes of the GaltFish project, as it was already stated before. It has been of great interest and aid to the project, providing a suitable example of the implications that the marine erosion and human action can have over the coastal archaeological sites
The monitoring of the archaeological site of Sobreira (Vigo) through the generation and comparison of two 3D models separated by a year has proven to be an efficient tool for assessing erosive processes affecting the site
Summary
The presence of a large number of factories for the processing of marine resources on the Atlantic coastline of ancient Gallaecia led, in 2016, to the launching of the research project GaltFish—Salt and Fish Salting in Ancient Gallaecia: looking for the origins of the Galician canned fish industry. These works provided first-hand evidence of the organisation and operation of these factories and resulted in the publication, in the database RAMPPA (http://ramppa.uca.es/), of 19 Roman fish-salting factories, located between the mouth of the Douro River (Portugal) and the Basque–French border (Fig. 1) These factories included the sites of O Naso (Illa de Arousa) and Sobreira (Oia, Vigo), which was proven to be a Roman fish factory (Fernández Fernández 2017c) rather than a villa a mare, as previously thought (Hidalgo Cuñarro and Viñas Cue 1999)
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