The 2006 Texas A&M field school
Words by Filipe Vieira de Castro (P.I.)
The Nautical Archaeology Program has organized a Summer School in Lagos, Portugal, during the month of June of 2006, with the support of the City of Lagos, a city with a long seafaring tradition and the place where Prince Henry the Navigator lived and planned the first effective steps of the Portuguese expansion overseas, which lead to the discovery of a maritime route to India.
The 2006 summer school was the first step of a series of actions to be developed at Lagos by Texas A&M University, in a cooperative plan expressed by a Memorandum of Agreement signed this year between the Municipality of Lagos and Texas A&M University.
Halted by bureaucratic problems, in 2007 the Lagos Project became nevertheless the core of a wider project, which has gathered the support of some of the most important centers and institutions dedicated to the study of Portuguese seafaring and Portuguese history of shipbuilding.
Although the ShipLab eventually gave up trying do field work in Portugal due to the bureaucratic complications and difficulties raised by the country's authorities, several scientific events have been organized around Lagos' Centro de Estudos Gil Eanes, and more events are planned to take place in the coming years.
The objective of the Lagos Project is now the study, protection and publication of the maritime history of Lagos region from an historical, rather than archaeological viewpoint. A wider cooperation between several universities and institutions aims at the study of the Portuguese maritime history.
The Nautical Archaeology Program has organized a Summer School in Lagos, Portugal, during the month of June of 2006, with the support of the City of Lagos, a city with a long seafaring tradition and the place where Prince Henry the Navigator lived and planned the first effective steps of the Portuguese expansion overseas, which lead to the discovery of a maritime route to India.
The 2006 summer school was the first step of a series of actions to be developed at Lagos by Texas A&M University, in a cooperative plan expressed by a Memorandum of Agreement signed this year between the Municipality of Lagos and Texas A&M University.
Halted by bureaucratic problems, in 2007 the Lagos Project became nevertheless the core of a wider project, which has gathered the support of some of the most important centers and institutions dedicated to the study of Portuguese seafaring and Portuguese history of shipbuilding.
Although the ShipLab eventually gave up trying do field work in Portugal due to the bureaucratic complications and difficulties raised by the country's authorities, several scientific events have been organized around Lagos' Centro de Estudos Gil Eanes, and more events are planned to take place in the coming years.
The objective of the Lagos Project is now the study, protection and publication of the maritime history of Lagos region from an historical, rather than archaeological viewpoint. A wider cooperation between several universities and institutions aims at the study of the Portuguese maritime history.
The pdf report of the field school, authored by Dr. Filipe Vieira de Castro is available on this link, http://nautarch.tamu.edu/shiplab/index_06portugal.htm