Archaeo-trio, lake and sea
Monday, 20 January 2025
What a first peek outside our window!
And there’s the sun! [Forty-four minutes later, but who’s counting??!!]
Off on our adventures, aha, there’s the first castle we’ve spotted, waaaay up high.
We enjoyed the last few meters before reaching an Iron Age village, along with munching cattle. [For the amount of dairy and pork we see on the table, we see remarkably few of those critters in the countryside.]
And there’s the settlement…with working archaeologists! Actually, looking at recent maps, that is the highest settlement area; more is “behind” us/me. But what’s exposed is ahead….
This rather large room produced multiple Greek and greek-style artifacts, including large ceramic vessels. This settlement was well-connected with Mediterranean coastal trading ports, undoubtedly Empúries, 12 miles away as the crow flies, so a day’s walk if you were in good shape and the path wasn’t muddy.
This area was built later, and some houses had even larger rooms.
Next stop: Lake Banyoles, the largest lake in Catalunya, and long renowned for its fishing.
Cormorants look like cormorants.
Early 20th C fishing (and bathing) “hut”—there’s more than a dozen spaced along this stretch of the shore.
However, people fished Lake Bangles even in the Neolithic. This hole is a below-the-water-level excavation that has now re-flooded. The water kept organic artifacts from rotting away, preserving wood, basketry, bones, seeds, and textile matter that’s usually totally absent. Archaeologists also found the remains of buildings, including structures on pilings.
Today’s Roman site is a farm called Vilauba. It began as a U-shaped building from the 1st–3rd C AD. Later, more rooms were added through the Visigothic period. This was the location of the press (represented by that interior rectangle of stone), probably for olives (I should have read the signs more closely, but: Catalan).
Speaking of Catalan, this room was a “rebost”, meaning pantry. The raft of pottery containers found here kept various foodstuffs and items (relatively) safe from critters and insects.
Back at our hotel, I took the trail down down down…
…to the beach. It’s pretty much high tide, I think.
Back up at the hotel, I spotted a gull taking a bath in the (closed for the season) pool. I shot a series of photos and discovered it turned its head to the right every time it ducked (is that term okay?) under. Here it’s fluffing its wings and tail.