Portugal UCH

Maritime archaeology studies humanity's relationship with water: maritime landscapes, means of water transport, ecology and exploitation of resources linked to the sea, rivers, and inland waters, but also trade, warfare, migrations, and cults and devotions linked to the sea and to rivers and lakes.

The history of human occupation of the planet is intimately linked to water. The study of waterborne means of transportation is generally referred to as nautical archaeology. Boats are sophisticated machines that were developed to transport people, goods, and ideas, leading to the development of means of propulsion and later means of orientation whose history is an important component of the history of science.

The interest of archaeologists in submerged sites dates back to the 19th century, but underwater archaeology only developed after the appearance of the self-contained scuba in the 1950s. Taking its first steps in 1960 by George Bass in the United States and Ole Crumlin-Pedersen in Denmark, underwater archaeology began as the study of the remains of sunken ships and vessels. The work of George Bass and Ole Crumlin-Pedersen was followed by the discovery of the almost intact remains of the warship Vasa, sunk in 1628 in Sweden, by the Swede Anders Franzen, which spurred public interest in the discipline.

In 1972 the first scientific journal fully dedicated to the discipline with international projection appeared, the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration. The first steps in underwater archaeology were characterized by an eclectic exploration of methodologies and theories applicable in wetlands. In 1976 George Bass created the first master's program in nautical archaeology, at Texas A&M University, Texas, USA. The scope of underwater archaeology broadened to the study of trade networks and port organization, and later to the lives of coastal populations. Gradually, underwater archaeology became a discipline with broad interests, designated as maritime archaeology.

In Portugal maritime archaeology took its first steps at the National Museum of Archaeology (MNA), under the guidance of the director, Francisco Alves, from the early 1980s, taking advantage of the pioneering work of interested citizens, like Miguel Lacerda and Francisco Reiner. The disinterest and amateurism that reigned in Portugal during the dictatorship had left the country’s cultural heritage abandoned, and in 1974-1975 the Dutch ship Slot ter Hooge (1724) was the object of a treasure hunt operation by a Belgian diver named Robert Sténuit (1975), who destroyed the site and recovered some artifacts and silver bars.

The interest in heritage as a cultural value gained support in the government area of culture from 1974 onwards, and in April 1980 the government of Francisco Sá Carneiro created a Secretary of State for Culture position in its structure whose duties included the inventory, conservation, and curation of the country’s cultural heritage, ensuring its survival and stimulating research in all related fields. The same diploma (Decree-Law No.59/80, of 3 April) created the Instituto Português do  Património Cultural (IPPC) to develop a policy for that sector (Art. 9) and "plan and promote the research, registration, inventorying, classification, recovery, conservation, protection and safeguarding of the assets that, for their historical, artistic, archaeological, bibliographic and documentary, ethnographic or landscape value, constitute elements of the cultural heritage of the country."

When Francisco Alves started promoting the interest in underwater heritage – with the support of Octávio Lixa Filgueiras – it was normal for dredging works not to be accompanied by archaeologists and take place without any planning that included safeguarding the heritage. The lack of interest in the underwater cultural heritage, and in the work of Francisco Alves, continued until the early 1990s. In 1992 Cavaco Silva’s neoliberal government created a new agency, the Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico (IPPAR) to replace the IPPC (Decree-Law No. 106-F/92 of June 1). In 1993 the situation of abandonment and disinterest in the Portuguese underwater cultural heritage worsened dramatically when Portugal legalized treasure hunting (Decree-Law 298/93 of August 21) and opened all the underwater archaeological sites to companies interested in extracting artifacts with market value.

The treasure hunting law was allegedly written by North American treasure hunters and the promiscuity between officials of the state cultural agency (IPPAR) and certain treasure hunting companies was exposed in the media. After the 1995 elections, the new Minister of Culture, Manuel Maria Carrilho (1995-2000), created the Instituto Português de Arqueologia (IPA), exclusively dedicated to archaeology (Decree-Law No. 117/97 of May 14), and outlawed the activity of all treasure-hunting companies before they were awarded salvage contracts.

From 1995 and with the support of Simonetta Luz Afonso, Manuel Maria Carrilho regulated underwater archaeology and created a Centro Nacional de Arqueologia Náutica e Subaquática (CNANS) in the IPA structure, endowed with means and a strategy for the study and safeguarding of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (Decree-Law 164/97 of June 27).

The period 1995-2002 was a golden age of Portuguese underwater archaeology, which saw the excavation and publication of several remains of ships from the 15th to 17th centuries, the musealization of the remains of the ship Nossa Senhora dos Mártires in the Portuguese Pavilion at Expo'98 (Afonso 1998) and the organization of a meeting in Lisbon on Iberian shipbuilding (Alves 2001).

To the Indiaman Nossa Senhora dos Mártires were added the remains of a stern of a ship found off Corpo Santo (c. 1400), at the works of the Lisbon Underground, and the remains of a medium-sized vessel found at Ria de Aveiro and called Aveiro A (c. 1500). The remains of a ship, possibly a galley, also found in the works of the Lisbon Underground, at Cais do Sodré station (c. 1500), were excavated and published, although they were abandoned and destroyed due to IPPAR neglect (Braga 1996; Castro et al. 2011).

Added to these vessels was the excavation of the remains of a French ship, dating from the last quarter of the 16th century, exposed in the dredging of the Arade River in the 1970s, and designated as Arade 1 (Castro 2005; Loureiro and Alves 2008).

From this period remained a series of publications and news in the media that encouraged some involvement of populations, expressed for example in the declaration of several underwater archaeological sites previously known only to divers and fishermen.

From 2005 onwards the influence of the CNANS declined and so did the number of popular publications. Combined with the contempt for citizens and the secrecy that characterized successive state agencies - IPPC (1980-1992), IPPAR (1992-2006), IGESPAR (2006-2011), DGPC (2011-2025), and now PCIP (2025-present) - the interest of the population decreased, and underwater archaeology became an activity of a small group of friends. Information about declared sites became practically inaccessible to the public, and to most researchers.

Figure 1. Number of processes related to maritime archaeology opened by the cultural agency by year (source: CNANS)

From 2011 onwards, the agency resigned almost completely from the management of underwater heritage and made its study and valorization even more difficult. Its mission - "to ensure the management, safeguarding, enhancement, conservation and restoration of the assets that integrate the immovable, movable and intangible cultural heritage of the country, as well as to develop and execute the national museological policy" - does not mention the involvement of the public and its practice reflects this omission. Without the participation of the public and the active involvement of the Navy, the Judiciary Police, and the information services, underwater archaeology became an occupation of a group of friends with no strategy, objectives, or supervision. 

In 2007, the government of José Sócrates dissolved the CNANS and transformed it into a Divisão de Arqueologia Náutica e Subaquática (DANS), deprived of resources and human capital. The negligence of the following governments left the Portuguese underwater heritage abandoned, and the only projects undertaken became those of preventive archaeology, mandatory under the laws of the country. The state's institutional obligations towards its submerged cultural heritage were ignored and the population alienated.

In the last two decades the Centro de História de Além Mar (CHAM) and the Instituto de Arqueologia e Paleociências (IAP) from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa promoted a significant number of underwater archaeology projects and Universidade NOVA graduated a dozen master's students with theses in maritime archaeology and history, and three doctoral students (Bettencourt at al. 2023). During this period perhaps more than 50 titles on topics related to maritime history and archaeology were published, but the underwater archaeology situation continues to suffer from PCIP’s lack of a plan, lack of leadership, and the culture of nepotism and secrecy that is still prevalent in that institution.

More focused on stopping any outside activity than on doing its work, PCIP has excluded the citizens from the management of the country’s submerged cultural heritage and the archaeological sites that are exposed by the increasingly violent storms that hit the country every are completely abandoned, and at the mercy of the looters.

One of the components of this project is the disclosure of underwater heritage to the public, trying to stimulate the interest of journalists and politicians to enable us to launch a call for change in the institutional culture of the PCIP.

The fundamental condition for the survival of a country’s cultural heritage is its careful and publicly accessible inventory. Portugal does not have a policy for the dissemination of archaeological finds and there seems to be no interest in the public administration in maintaining a democratic and mutually respectful relationship with the public, informing us about developments and new discoveries and inviting us to participate.

The project presented here aims to mitigate the secrecy of archaeology in Portugal and involve citizens and taxpayers in the sharing of information and management of the country’s underwater cultural heritage. This problem is not only Portuguese. Originating in Europe as an occupation of the upper classes, archaeology still suffers from communication problems regarding the sharing of primary data, the scarcity of publications, and the lack of public involvement in the management, study, and promotion of the cultural heritage.

Worldwide, archaeologists publish only a fraction of the sites they excavate - and therefore destroy (Bass 2011). Academic studies suggest that in the last 50 years less than 25% of the materials and results of professional earth archaeological excavations are adequately published (Boardman 2009). According to experts, about 70% of Near Eastern excavations have not been published (Atwood 2007; Owen 2009) and about 80% of Italian archaeological materials remain unpublished (Stoddart and Malone 2001).  It is difficult to argue that the situation in maritime archaeology is better than the above.

As mentioned, the management of nautical and underwater cultural heritage in Portugal is particularly mediocre. The arguments for a public and participated archaeology are ignored, the absence of a data management and sharing policy hinders discussions among specialists and prevents public discussions and citizen participation in cultural heritage management. There are few local or community archaeology projects, an inexplicably antagonistic relationship with real estate promoters and contractors is the rule, and the state agency ignores municipalities, schools, cultural groups, or amateur institutions interested in sharing responsibility for the preservation of the cultural heritage.

This situation is not based on any compelling practical reason: it is only based on the organizational culture of the successive cultural agencies, whose ignorance and lack of basic democratic education self-replicate in a system ruled by nepotism and the laziness of the always changing political appointees.

It is not hard to imagine a situation in which museums could be places where communities meet their cultural heritage, their past, their memories and amnesias, and their traditions and beliefs, which give meaning to the present. As it happens in so many European countries and beyond, the Portuguese state agency could be a platform where information about heritage could converge and where ideas could emanate, and culture could be disseminated, encouraging citizens' shared responsibility and governance, and promoting the cause of the cultural heritage.

The Portuguese reality is very different, as demonstrated by the dismal management of the finding of two ships in Bugio in 2017, of which one is an exceptionally well-preserved Indiaman lost in 1625, the nau São Francisco Xavier (Rosa 2017; Monteiro et al. 2018; Naves 2018; Castro 2022). The government's contempt and bad faith towards the citizens who declared the find constitute a savage act of irresponsibility and disrespect for the country’s citizens that should shame us all, even though they were considered normal procedure, part of the routine of the services of the Ministry of Culture.

The Portuguese nautical and underwater heritage is very rich. Portuguese maritime history is relatively well studied. Since the late 19th century, historians and naval officers have developed an extraordinary work in the fields of historiography and ethnography. Maritime archaeology, however, still lacks a strategy, a vision, and a plan.

Successive state cultural agencies have managed maritime archaeology reactively, without a strategic vision, without a clearly defined mission, and, in a small country like Portugal, without distance or professionalism from the fights among archaeologists.

The development of a public underwater cultural heritage database is thus urgent and fundamental for the sustained management of the country’s heritage. The work of collecting information on Portuguese underwater cultural heritage began in the 1980s, at the MNA, as mentioned above, but this process has not been continuous and lacks coherence. Verified or not, registered sites sometimes have several case numbers associated with them and are difficult to evaluate and classify.

In the early 1990s, Adolfo Silveira Martins inserted the MNA's underwater cultural heritage files in an Access (Microsoft) database, called the National Inventory of Submerged Archaeological Sites (INSAS), which allowed data consultation and analysis. Unfortunately, the computerization of this database did not give rise to a management policy or a methodology for its updating and development as the basis of a management policy. In addition, shipwreck reports, historical references and archaeological sites were entered together, creating ambiguity and confusion. Moreover, most declared sites were never verified, and historical references were often entered without careful analysis of the sources and with confusions about toponymy, making the database unreliable and therefore useless.

In 1995 the INSAS database began to be integrated into a larger GIS database, which was shared online in 1998 under the name Endovélico (Bugalhão et al. 2002). This archaeological chart, however, does not separate archaeological sites from historical shipwreck records, is not up to date, has errors, omissions, and in some cases the nomenclature creates confusion about contiguous, overlapping, or nearby sites. As mentioned, archaeological sites have been registered by successive cultural agencies with different numbers, accumulated over time and has generated a situation that makes it difficult to inventory and verify them in the field.

Despite the effort of some staff members, the successive heads of the cultural agency showed no interest in the priorities expressed by their own services: "Systematizing inventory norms and performing systematic and updated inventorying of the assets that integrate the cultural heritage are more than primordial tasks; as we shall see, they are essential instruments in the management and safeguarding of this heritage" (Gomes et al. 2012).

In 1997 the CNANS acquired the archive of researcher Patrick Lizé, although it has not been properly studied, nor its sources verified. A study conducted by Alexandre Monteiro in 2021, on a sample of the State database, revealed that only about 30% of the shipwrecks mentioned in historical documents are inserted in that database, and that there are hundreds of errors, which include the inclusion of the same shipwreck several times, and confusions with toponymy or in the interpretation of historical documents (Monteiro 2022, 159-160).

In this context, before analysing and classifying each record, it is necessary to relate the identifiers informatically: MNA file numbers, numbers of the general inventory (CA/IGCASub), numbers of the national site code (CNS), CNANS process numbers, and numbers of the subject file that transitioned from the MNA to the CNANS in 1997, when these exist, which is not always the case.

This archaeological chart project intends to make public the existing information about the finds of archaeological sites in Portuguese waters, mentioning whether they are confirmed or not, provided that this information does not endanger the integrity of vulnerable sites, and to explain the value and interest of this heritage and the stories it tells us.

To this end, the archaeological sites known to exist on the Portuguese coast and inland waters have been typified and organized into groups. A first division considers three types of sites: a) the remains of sunken ships, b) isolated artifacts, and c) the remains of constructions linked to the sea/land interface.

In a second division the ship remains are divided by periods and types, the artifacts separated into groups such as guns, anchors, astrolabes, and other easily characterized types, and the coastal structures into forts, lighthouses, jetties, harbours, and bridges, to name just a few of the groups.

The present database was created from scratch and then compared with existing information, which includes the author's personal notes, lists from the National Archaeological Museum and the National Centre for Nautical and Underwater Archaeology, and survey reports. We tried to keep PCIP and the Navy informed, but they have shown no interest in any sort of collaboration. The difficulty of access to the archives of the PCIP makes this work time-consuming. Many reports of archaeological work are not accessible and the time it takes the PCIP to approve those that should be accessible is inexplicably long.

As noted, many of the sites mentioned in these lists are unverified, others are probably repeated, others probably never existed, and others have been destroyed by amateur divers, covered up with marine works, dredged, or razed by trawls.

Thus, the database that we are developing is intended as a working project, always being updated, that allows for the possibility that there may be archaeological materials in some unconfirmed areas, and that serves to protect known sites.

The organization of this inventory is based on the political division of the country into municipalities and the corresponding maritime authorities (capitanias). Repeated sites will eventually be gathered under a single designation and sites with contexts with different chronologies will be separated for convenience of cataloguing and interpretation.

The value of a database of submerged heritage lies in the stories it tells rather than in the quality or market value of the artifacts, and this circumstance is the basis of the organization proposed here

The database will be organized as a simple table with 21 fields, in English for sharing on the internet, and designed with the intention of being expanded to include other existing databases developed by the author within the NADL / Nautical Archaeology Digital Library project (Borrero et al. 2021):

 

Campo		Descrição
Object ID		Automatic number
Shape		Object type: point, line, or polygon
Latitude		Latitude of the centre of the area considered
Longitude		Longitude of the centre of the area considered
Radius		Radius of the area of better probability where the site is located
Layer		The layer where the item is entered
Reference		Alphanumeric reference of the site: three letters from the municipality and number with three positions
Designation		Names attributed to the site over time:    Toponym    Name of the ship when it is identified    Other designations
Description		Description of the site or find:    Text
Characteristics		Three columns with dimensions and typologies associated with the site
Flag		Three columns for the ships’ flags and ports of origin and destination
Location		Two columns to enter data characterizing the site and its depth
Capitania		Navy authority with jurisdiction over the site
Distrito		District where the site is located
Concelho		Municipality where the site is located
TPQ	Terminus post quem
TAQ	Terminus ante quem
Period	Historical period
Source	Source of the information:    Finder or informant    Bibliography    Other
Date	Date of the finding and recovery, when applicable
Situation	Information over the site existence:    Place stored when it was recovered    Verified or not
Information from the several databases started by the cultural agency	Número CNS    Designação associada ao CNS    Número CA    Número”Achados”    Número JN    Número de Processo do CNANS    Nome de Processo do CNANS    Other
Time (automatic)	Time of entry of the data

 

The elaboration of this database is a team effort, coordinated by the author and developed by a large group of collaborators spread throughout the country in the case of the Portuguese database, and over 30 countries in the world in the case of the other databases that we intend to articulate with the one presented here (see Appendix 6 - Team).

Since 2005, the nautical archaeology program at Texas A&M University has developed, in collaboration with the computer science and visualization departments, a set of experiments with databases containing information related to nautical archaeology. The project, funded with a grant from the National Science Foundation ((NSF-IIS-0534314) is entitled Nautical Archaeology Digital Library (NADL) and served as a training ground for several initiatives related to the database we present here. The databases already developed within the NADL project and that we plan to articulate with the present database will include:

a) a database of Portuguese ships lost outside Portuguese waters, with special emphasis on shipwrecks of ships of the India Route;

b) A database of nautical astrolabes;

c) A database of ship bells from before 1700;

d) A database of wooden western ships sunk in the modern period;

e) A database of classic ships with wooden remains found in the Mediterranean.

We plan to link other databases to the one presented here, and to add fields such as photographs, site plans, or even videos, as the project evolves.

An ontology is an important part of this project that will be implemented in a second phase of the project.

In the late 1950s the archaeologists Willey and Phillips wrote that "archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing," because they felt that the goals of archaeology should be anthropological and answer questions about culture and society (1958). During the 20th century the questions of archaeology became questions of philosophy – who we are, where we come from, where we are going, what we should do, and what we can know – and archaeology developed meta-studies, notably about the methods and theories that inform it and make it relevant.

In the 21st century, the world will continue to integrate, culturally and economically, and the inevitable homogenization of the integration process and globalization of the economy will turn the past into a valuable source of information about the diversity of human experience in a much more homogeneous world than at any time in the past.

Heritage, museums, and publications about the past are closely linked to the ideas of community, democracy, and citizenship. The Louvre Museum opened on August 10, 1793, on the first anniversary of the arrest of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, which had led to the establishment of the republic in September of that year. Culture, which until then had been the preserve of the wealthy classes, was to become more democratic and accessible in the 19th century.

The world of the 20th century changed radically. Today, literacy on the planet is close to 90% among the youngest and about half of the planet's inhabitants are connected to the Internet. Our generation will be replaced by one that is better informed, faster, more cultured, more diverse and more flexible.

This database intends to serve to keep the public informed and interested, encourage municipalities to participate in the management and valorisation of heritage, decentralize and democratize information, and promote the study and safeguarding of heritage and local memory favouring all available voices and narratives and trying to construct a narrative that is as plural and fair as possible.

Additionally, this database is intended to be a management tool for State organs with an interest in protecting the country: the Navy, the municipalities, the police and the information services. Should DGPC accept our input, we will naturally collaborate with them.