Landscape Domestication and Archaeology
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La Draga: Environmental Archaeology Ramon Buxo´1, Raquel Pique´2 and Maria San˜a2 1 Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya, Girona, Spain 2 Department de Prehisto`ria, Universitat Auto`noma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Introduction La Draga (Banyoles, Girona Province) is one of the most important sites of Iberian later prehistory. It is well known for being the only lakeshore settlement that has been identified so far in Spain. The site was discovered in 1990 and, from then until today, several archaeological excavations have taken place under the scientific supervision of the Museu Arqueolo`gic Comarcal de Banyoles and the Centre d’Arqueologia Subaqua`tica de Catalunya/Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya. A second phase is now being undertaken with the additional collaboration of the Universitat Auto`noma de Barcelona and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientı´ficas (Bosch et al. 2000, 2006, 2011). The settlement is located at the eastern side of Lake Banyoles, 170 m. a.s.l. (Fig. 1). Nowadays, the biggest part of it is in the dry land, but part of the site is under water. It is thought that the original settlement was around 8,000 m2, but archaeological work has focused on a smaller
area, of around 3,000 m2, where the site seems to have remained better preserved. La Draga is characterized by the exceptional preservation of wood and other plant remains, which together with the charred remains of fuel consumption makes this an exceptional site to see how the landscape was in time when the site was occupied. The studies of fauna and plant remains have been one of La Draga’s most consistent contributions, thanks to the huge quantity of samples, as well as their variety. Three main areas have been excavated (Fig. 2): sector A, of approximately 284 m2; sector B, of 126 m2; and sector C, of 310 m2. Sector A is on the eastern part, where the water table is around 70 cm below the archaeological layer, which means that waterlogged conditions have not prevailed until the present and the organic material of the archaeological layer has disappeared. Only the tips of the wooden posts, which still are in waterlogged conditions, have been recovered. Sectors B and C have maintained the waterlogged conditions ever since the Neolithic period. Recently a new area of 58 m2 is being excavated, sector D. As far as the chronology is concerned, the latest information comes from a batch AMS radiocarbon dates, which consistently place the two archaeological levels of La Draga in the Neolithic Cardial culture. The initial phase can now be situated between 5,324 and 5,000 cal BCE and the second between 5,210 and 4,980 cal BCE (Tarru´s 2009; Bosch et al. 2011).
C. Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
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La Draga: Environmental Archaeology
Key Issues/Current Debates/Future Directions/Examples
La Draga: Environmental Archaeology, Fig. 1 Location of the settlement of La Draga
La Draga: Environmental Archaeology, Fig. 2 Archaeological works a
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