Chapter 2 – FOREIGN INTRUDERS

The Bronze Age that followed the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods started at different times in different places in the world and even within Europe. Portugal is included in the so-called Atlantic Bronze Age, which lasted roughly from 1300 BC to 700 BC.

The tribal people living in isolated communities in southern Portugal were “small in stature, wiry, with high cheekbones and dark complexions,” according to ancient writers who referred to them loosely as “Iberians”.

A sea cavern near Nossa Senhora da Rocha called Forno de Mouros has ben a particularly rich source of Bronze Age artefacts. Burial sites from this period have been found in Porches Velho, Crastos and within the grounds of what is now the Porches International School.  Little is known about these ancient cemeteries except that tombs were constructed of flat rocks and seem to have been designed for bodies laid in the foetal position. Artefacts were found strewn about at random rather than carefully placed.

While the Iberians continued to use stone tools, by the middle of the Bronze Age they would have been introduced to the wonders of metals by a more dynamic people from the far eastern end of the Mediterranean - the Phoenicians.  The most outstanding seafarers of their era, the Phoenicians set up trading posts along the southern Iberian coast, mainly to barter eastern manufactured goods for copper, tin and silver mined in the region, including in the vicinity of Silves. 

Ancient writers variously named the region Cineticum or Turdetânia. One of their main trading posts was at Balsa, the original name for Tavira. Alvor and, perhaps, Silvs are thought to have been founded by the Phoenicians.

In addition to the Phoenicians coming and going in their magnificent galleys, a much higher degree of internal civilisation developed among the Iberian communities with the arrival between the 8th and 6th centuries BC of successive waves of Celts from Central Europe via France. The resulting ethnic mix were a pastoral people who became skilled in working with iron and became collectively known as Celtiberians.

The people of the Algarve and southern Alentejo before the 6th century BC were identified by Herodotus not as Celtiberians but as the Cynetes. Herodotus, the most famous of all ancient Greek historians, considered the Cynetes to be a separate culture from the Celts. He believed the Cynetes to be the most westerly inhabitants of all Europe. Other ancient authors referred to these people in Greek or Latin under various other names, including the Conii, Kunetes or Konioi. Their language was Tartessian and, according to the Greek geographer, philosopher and historian Strabo, they had a capital city in the Algarve called Consistorgis.  The exact whereabouts of Consistorgis is not known but it is thought to have been a little inland from present-day Faro, or further east at Cacela Velha.

From the 6th century BC, resident Algarvian people became all too familiar with Greek as well as Phoenician traders. Both the Greeks and the Phoenicians eventually succumbed to the might of the colonist Carthaginians who in the 3rd century BC expanded from their eastern Mediterranean homeland and took command of the western Mediterranean and beyond the Pillars of Hercules at the Straits of Gibraltar.

Carthaginian armies are believed to have taken advantage of the Algarve’s mild climate to overwinter in the region, and yet very little evidence of the Carthaginian occupation has ever been collected.

Polished pottery was a feature of the late Bronze Age and some examples have been unearthed in the parish of Porches, but, in truth, what really went on here in the thousand years before Christ is largely a mystery.

By contrast, the influence of the next great wave of intruders – the Romans - remains profound to this day.

From the start of their occupation and rule in southern Portugal in 137 BC, the Romans began implanting their language, laws, customs, organisational skills, life styles and religion. They built towns and connected them with highways, one of which ran from Ossónoba (Faro) to Olissipo (Lisbon). Remnants of Roman buildings and artefacts survive in the Algarve, most notably at Milreu near Estói, Cerro da Vila (Vilamoura) and at Abicada, between Portimão and Lagos. 

One of the least know Roman ruins lies all but buried in dense undergrowth in the parish of Porches. The ruins are of a dam wall constructed across a gully at Vale de Olival. Usually dry nowadays, it was probably a considerable stream in Roman times. The dam was strongly constructed of rocks held tightly together with a concrete material called Opus caementicium. Such concrete was widely used throughout the Roman Empire in the early centuries AD.

The ruin is officially but confusing called the Ponte dos Mouros, meaning Bridge of the Moors. It may also have been a bridge but essentially it was a reservoir dam wall  and it existed long before the Moors arrived. Build in the 3rd or 4th centuries AD, the wall measured 32m wide, 6.5m high and 3m thick and was capable of storing 3,2 square kilometres of fresh water.  
A big section of the dam wall still stands on the right side of the gully. A few large chunks that broke off at some stage lie a little downstream. It would have taken a mighty force to have brought the wall tumbling down, probably a mightier force than water pressure alone. The wall was most likely destroyed by the great earthquake and subsequent tsunami of 1755 that caused so much destruction in the Porches area and beyond.

Archaeologist believe the water held by the dam was probably used for domestic home use and for irrigating crops as well as being fed periodically into tanks used in the fermentation of garum on or near the beach at Armação de Pêra a short distance downstream.  Garum was a fish paste that the Romans used as a condiment. It was made by crushing the innards of such fish as sardines, horse mackerel and tuna and fermenting them in brine. All the raw materials were readily available locally.

Having stood for the best part of 1,500 years from its original construction to the great earthquake, the dam at Vale de Olival was probably used for irrigation throughout the Middle Ages, especially so after the surge in local farming to feed an increasing population from the 15th century.  

Above an overgrown section of the Roman dam wall. 

Below, a close-up.