2016 - March  :   Tiago Fraga  -  The lost city of the Ria Formosa                    


The Algarve's Ria Formosa lagoon is one of Portugal's most beautiful natural harbours, situated between Quinta do Lago and Cacela Velha in the central Algarve. The Ria Formosa stretches for 60km and lies inside a string of natural barrier islands (Faro, Barreta, Culatra, Armona, Tavira and Cabanas).
These islands protected Faro, unlike other Algarvian coastal towns, from serious damage from the Tsunami of 1755 which accompanied the great earthquake.
Although activities such as fishing and seasalt harvesting have been undertaken in the locality for at least the last 2000 years, the islands have only been settled more permanently since the 19th century.
Tiago Miguel Fraga graduated from the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa and earned his M.A. in Anthropology at Texas A&M Nautical Archaeology Program and currently is a Ph.D. student at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He is specialized in the virtual reconstruction of vessels, a subject he teaches at graduate degree. He is an expert in training underwater archaeology teams and in tridimensional reconstruction of shipwrecks. His goals are to help develop the field of nautical archaeology especially in computerized reconstruction techniques.
With years of field experience and participation in several archaeological excavations, he was the Principal Investigator of several projects, is researcher and invited lecturer at Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa.

He is book author and author of several articles in journals both national and abroad.
He was the recipient of scholarships and awards, by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Luso-American Development Foundation, Texas A&M University, Jack Petchy Foundation and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia.
In the talk Tiago presented a cursory view of the toponymical meanings in the Ria Formosa. First we were made aware of the evolution of the two different maritime cultures in the area, partly due to the evolution of the Ria Formosa. As the Ria Formosa developed and become more complex navigation wise also did the complexity and richness of its maritime history. In the names of the bays, channels, inlets, islands, and small shallows lies information regarding ancient cities, harbors, events, people and folklore. Some of the presented examples were regarding the existence of sunken forts in Ria Formosa, the existence of one sunken city. Some of the more interesting stories presented were regarding the existence of ancient lighthouses in Cape Santa Maria, which have disappeared presently. Regarding maritime culture, Ria Formosa was partially responsible for the splitting of the culture into two major cultures in the region, one sheltered by Ria Formosa developed a shallow rich fishing industry and the other one unabated by obstacles move towards a more commercial oriented trading culture. In the end several interesting questions were raised and the talk went on into a lively debate.