Consideraciones paleogeográficas en la bahía de Algeciras. Acerca de un posible tsunami en la Carteia romana (San Roque, Cádiz)

Abstract

Algeciras, hoy desecada en esta zona y que, para el tema que nos ocupa, parecen confirmar la existencia e importancia del evento detectado en 2003.Palabras clave: tsunami; Carteia; bahía de Algeciras; paleogeografía; arqueología del paisaje. AbstractThe urgent excavations carried out in the Roman industrial district of Alfarera at Puente Mayorga (San Roque, Cádiz), between the years 2003 and 2004, provided us with interesting evidence that a tsumani may have occurred, as well as a comprehensive vision of the buildings that existed in the outskirts of Carteia. Through granulometric analysis, morphoscopic study and the identification of its malacofauna, the high level of sand documented, which was interpreted archaeologically as a hiatus between two productive phases in the industrial district Alfarera, was identified to be the result of a high energy wave.The need to confirm such an important finding and the fact that these studies, which were carried out by team of members from both the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and the Universidad de Cádiz, were part of another larger, interdisciplinary study carried out by the UAM under the generic title Proyecto Carteia ("Carteia Project"), led to a series of geoarchaeological auger surveys in direct relation to this important Phoenician-Roman city, which were carried out in 2010.In this way, we were led to an area that spanned from the present mouth of the Guadarranque River to its far left, reached Carteia and then stretched as far as the Phoenician settlement of Cerro del Prado or Carteia la Vieja, where the original mouth of the river was in the 7 th century BC. A total of 8 auger surveys were carried out and in this paper we offer a preview of the findings of the first four of these, which took place between the current coastline and the walled slopes of the city of Carteia. In this way, we examine a more important part of the Bay of Algeciras, which has today dried up and which seems to confirm the occurrence, and significance, of the event that was detected in 2003.