Production of fish-sauces in Lusitania. The productive frame of the boca do rio and the other cetariae of the Algarve

Abstract

The development of the studies about the production and commerce of fish-sauces in Portugal took place, essentially, in the 1990s, a consequence of the large number of archaeological interventions in coastal areas resulted of the exponential urban growth. There is a big concentration of tanks (cetariae) and other roman fishery structures, both in the estuaries of the Tagus and Sado rivers as in the south coast of the Algarve. But, throughout the Algarve coast does not exists one of these archaeological sites fully excavated, and, the more recent discoveries (of 2010) were of sporadic preventive archeological works. This study updates the knowledge of the cetariae of the region, in particular about types, quantity, architecture, location, integration in a territory, state of conservation, estimating, for the cases of complete tanks, the productive capacities.