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Understanding the plant economy of the westernmost territory of the Roman state through waste: the wet site of O Areal (Vigo, Spain)

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Abstract

The Roman economy of the Iberian Peninsula has habitually been characterised in terms of prestige goods and economic activities such as mining, salting, and metallurgy. Apart from the trade in wine and oil, the economy of plant-based foods—less prestigious but more essential in everyday life—has commonly been marginalised in state-of-the-art reviews. The O Areal saltworks is exceptional in terms of the large number of organic materials it preserves, and the excellent state of that preservation. After its abandonment (end of the third/fourth century ad), the saltworks was briefly used as a dumping ground for the surrounding area. The site’s archaeobotanical remains, preserved under anoxic, waterlogged conditions, consist of the building materials used at the saltworks, tools and other artefacts, organic objects employed in activities such as fishing, and refuse. The assemblage suggests a wide diversity of species to have been introduced into northwestern Iberia during the Roman period, including Morus nigra (mulberry), Prunus persica (peach), Ficus carica (fig), Prunus domestica ssp. insititia (plum), Vitis vinifera (grapevine), and Cucumis melo (melon). The notable presence of other edible fruit species that normally grew wild during this period, such as Castanea sativa (chestnut), Juglans regia (walnut), Pinus pinea (stone pine), and Prunus avium (wild cherry) trees, might be related to the start of their cultivation.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Re-drawn from the survey plan of M. J. Iglesias Darriba and M. Á. Sartal Lorenzo

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Fig. 4

Photograph M. Á. Sartal Lorenzo

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Acknowledgements

Analyses were performed at the Laboratory of Archaeobotany, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. The author thanks Miguel Sartal Lorenzo and María Jesús Iglesias Darriba (Adro Arqueolóxica S.L.) and Mario César Vila (P&A Arqueólogos S.L.)—the directors of the different archaeological excavations at the site—who were responsible for collecting the samples examined. Thanks are also due to two anonymous reviewers for their help in improving the original manuscript. We thank Adrian Burton (www.physicalevidence.es) for language and editing assistance.

Funding

This work was funded by the Xunta de Galicia through the Consellería de Cultura e Turismo (2008-CP068 and 2009-CP078) and the Dirección Xeral de Patrimonio Cultural (2009-CP015).

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  1. Departamento de Historia, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Praza da Universidade 1, 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Andrés Teira-Brión

  2. University of Oxford, School of Archaeology, 36 Beaumont Street, OX1 2PG, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Andrés Teira-Brión

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  1. Andrés Teira-Brión
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Correspondence to Andrés Teira-Brión.

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Teira-Brión, A. Understanding the plant economy of the westernmost territory of the Roman state through waste: the wet site of O Areal (Vigo, Spain). Veget Hist Archaeobot 31, 595–610 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-022-00878-x

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