Roman Lead Anchor Stocks in Portugal

Introduction

A number of anchor stocks has been found by sport divers on some of the most popular diving sites along the Portuguese coast.  We are developing an inventory within the NADL project and we are trying to make sense of the entire collection, in terms of their location in the context of the Roman occupation of the territory that forms Portugal today.

There is an enormous confusion in the Portuguese state agency for maritime archaeology, and not only their archives are a mess, but their relation with the finders is bad, and therefore it is difficult to reconstruct the story of the lead stocks that ended up in state collections.

This is the best we could conclude, but since the Portuguese maritime archaeology policy is grounded on paranoia and distrust of the citizens, their secrecy makes it difficult to even access the public records.

The state of the art inventory is in this link: Portuguese known lead stocks

References

Castro, F., 2023. Projeto de Carta Arqueológica Subaquática de Portugal. Volume 2. Cepos de Ancora em Chumbo. Ship Library (ShipLib): A Maritime Archaeology Database. Universidade de Coimbra, Grant No. 2021.00259.CEECIND.