Caves in the municipality of Vila do Bispo are once again the target of archaeological research

Archaeological research returns to the caves of the municipality of Vila do Bispo with the project "PaleoCoast – Coastal human adaptations during the Paleolithic in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula", launched in 2017 with an extensive campaign of speleoarchaeological surveys, on land and at sea.

This is a scientific initiative based at the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behavior ( ICArEHB ) of the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences ( FCHS ) of the University of Algarve ( UAlg ), with the support of the Center for Marine and Environmental Research ( CIMA ), and the Vila do Bispo City Council | Vila do Bispo Museum – History Barn.

The team is composed of João Marreiros (coordinator of the Archaeology area, UALG, ICArEHB, Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie), Duarte Duarte, (coordinator of the Hydrodynamics area, UALG, CIMA), Frederico Tatá Regala (archaeologist and speleologist, ProPEA – Algarve Speleological Heritage Project, AESDA – Association of Underground Studies and Environmental Protection), David Nora (archaeologist, UALG, ICArEHB), Eduardo Paixão (UALG, ICArEHB), Ricardo Soares (archaeologist and speleologist, MVB-CH), Rui Francisco – Loia (speleologist), Ramiro Santos (archaeologist, MVB-CH), among other active collaborators.

This multidisciplinary initiative, which crosses the areas of Archaeology, Geology, Speleology and Archaeological Sciences, in terrestrial and underwater environments, will allow us to deepen the knowledge acquired in the survey underway since 2014, within the scope of the municipal project «Archaeological Map of the Municipality of Vila do Bispo» , under the scientific responsibility of Ricardo Soares, municipal archaeologist working for the Vila do Bispo Museum – Celeiro da História, a heritage database where 40 karst cavities are recorded, including caves, sinkholes and shelters.