2011 - Aug :  Visits by some of our members
                              to the restauration work at the Roman Villa at Abicada

Finally, long hoped for works at the Roman Villa at Abicada have begun which will lead to lifting all of the mosaic floors and bringing them to Portimao Museum for restoration and safe keeping. In addition, drainage channels are being installed around the entire archaeological site in order to prevent winter rains from doing further damage.
On a recent visit to the site the archaeologist Eduardo Porfirio, manager of the aptly named company Palimpsesto Lda., an organization concerned with the study and preservation of the country’s cultural heritage, gave some of his precious time explaining the work in progress.
Sr. Porfirio told that, before any work begins, it must be decided how a mosaic is best divided into workable sections of not more than 1 ½ m2 without destroying any part of the design. After that the location in the floor plan and the orientation of each section is recorded and numbered and the tesserae which are carefully taken out along their margins are collected and labeled.
Along the cleaned margins of a thus defined division, ca. 10 centimeters of tesserae are painted with a pva-based glue and a strip of gauze is applied which not only covers the tesserae, but -very importantly- also hugs around the edges to consolidate them. Then glue is applied to the entire surface area of the division and a tough cloth is pressed onto the surface. Once the glue has dried, the cloth holds the tesserae in place and also gives the division cohesion so that it can now be handled more easily.

The final stage of the work is the actual ‘lifting‘of the mosaics. That’s when -as Sr. Porfirio put it– “the technicians have their hearts in their hands”. As one can imagine, the prying loose of each fragile division of mosaic from the hard earth beneath it is a very difficult undertaking, especially when one considers that a section can weigh up to 200Kg.
On a subsequent visit to the Roman Villa there was a chance to watch the technicians during the final stage of the recovery work as they were separating the mosaics from the ground on which they had been laid in the early centuries A.D.
In order to provide access to the ground beneath the mosaic, a technician had already chiseled around a previously prepared section a narrow trench down into the hard pan to just below the medium in which the tesserae were embedded.
Now he could start detaching the division. Beginning at one end, he inserted a crowbar underneath it and with careful hammer blows started to break apart the hard soil on which the mosaic was resting. As he continued, two of his colleagues, one on each side, had to grab the cloth and lift the freed part, so that he could pry loose the remainder of the section.
With much care and patience the entire division was finally completely detached, turned over, and carried to a correspondingly labeled wooden platform, where it was placed -tesserae facing down- and covered with a sheet of plastic, ready for transport.
Last, the ground from which the mosaic had been lifted was scanned for any tesserae which had not adhered to the cloth. The few that were found were collected and labeled to be replaced during restoration work.