RT Journal Article
T1 Palaeoenvironmental Framing of the O Areal Roman Saltworks and Related Anthropogenic Activities in North-western Iberia
A1 López Merino, Lourdes
A1 Tallón-Armada, Rebeca
A1 Costa-Casais, Manuela
A1 Silva-Sánchez, Noemí
A1 López-Sáez, José Antonio
A1 Martínez Cortizas, Antonio
AB The NW Iberian city of Vigo contains buried structures of a Roman salinae that follow the ancient coastline. To investigate its environmental legacy, we studied two pedo-sedimentary profiles at the O Areal saltworks to reconstruct human activities during and after the salinae use, as well as framing them within the last two millennia of climate variability. The bottom layer consists of organic-rich sands, with marine palynomorphs, confined within the saltworks’ structures that operated during the Early Roman Empire, when the demand in fish-salted products increased and the salting industry fluorished on the Atlantic coast of Iberia. During the Late Roman Empire, salt production at the O Areal may have ended, coeval with the development of a marsh with hydro-hygrophyte vegetation and the salting industry demise. The Roman environment also experienced intense agropastoralism that triggered water eutrophication. After Roman times, a dune phase sealed the archaeologicl structures. The overall trend points to a shift from a marine to a terrestrial setting coeval to known periods of climate variability. Therefore, humans and climate impacted the coast during the last two millennia, including the very intense Roman-period saltworks, agriculture and livestock. Roman times climate would have also influenced the saltworks’ establishment and abandonment.
PB Taylor & Francis
YR 2023
FD 2023
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/132892
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/132892
LA eng
NO López-Merino L, Tallón-Armada R, Costa-Casais M, et al. Palaeoenvironmental Framing of the O Areal Roman Saltworks and Related Anthropogenic Activities in North-western Iberia. Environmental Archaeology 2023:1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/14614103.2023.2206199
NO Xunta de Galicia (España)
NO Comunidad de Madrid (España)
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 26 feb 2026