De las complejas estrategias pesqueras hispanorromanas. Atunes, boquerones, caballas, jureles y sardinas en El Olivillo de Gades

Abstract

In the last decades several models of fishing exploitation in the Western Mediterranean have been proposed, based on documented icthyo-archaeological evidence from fishsalting plants and from markets and consumer contexts. In addition to a perennial local fishery for self-onsumption, it has been argued that the industrial fishing of tuna and mackerel, which has been active since the republican era, gradually gave way to catches of smaller fish, especially clupeids, due to the exhaustion or pressure of fishing grounds, mainly from the 3rd c. AD. Recent archaeological excavations in Gades (El Olivillo project), undertaken by the University of Cadiz, have documented a halieutic Testaccio near the harbour generated as a result of waste discharges from the fishing-canning activity; in which tunas, sardines and mackerels dating back to the Augustan period and the 1st c. AD appear together in big quantities. Together with other indicators in the Fretum Gaditanum, it is possible to propose a much more complex and varied exploitation strategy, attributing methodological and partly fortuitous questions to the absence of tuna in Late Antiquity and that of sardines at the beginning of the imperial era. And putting on the table the need to have a larger archaeological sample than the currently available, still insufficient, to be able to propose models.