Forthcoming lectures

Please be aware of times changed
Lagao : Start is now at 19:15
Sao Bras : As of January 2012 will start at 15:00

Tuesday 07 Feb 2012 - Fantina Maria Santos Tedim: Implications for the Algarve of the 1st November 1755 earthquake.
The 1st November 1755 earthquake remains so far the most powerful and destructive earthquake that has ever affected Europe. Within minutes, many lives were lost, livelihoods, buildings and infrastructures were destroyed. Moments later a tsunami increased the number of victims and the amount of damage. This earthquake is considered to be the first ‘modern’ disaster because it was the first to evoke a coordinated state of emergency response as well as a comprehensive effort for reconstruction and mitigation in order to prevent future disasters (Dynes 2003).
In order to understand the impacts of this event in the Algarve Dra Tedim will address the following topics; i) The historical and scientific sources; ii) The impacts of the earthquake and tsunami in the Algarve: from literary evidence to physical signatures; iii) The disaster responses.
Finally we will make some considerations about the impact of a similar event nowadays, considering that the seismic disaster risk is a product of hazard and vulnerability.
Dra. Tedim is currently assistant professor in the Geography Department at the University of Porto. She has a degree in Geography (Porto), a master in Human Geography (Coimbra) and a PhD in Human Geography (Porto). In 2006 she began research directed towards risk assessment and disaster response and management and the assessment of vulnerability and resilience are her main priorities because of its applications in population welfare after such events. During this work she has also had the opportunity to develop research related to tsunamis, floods and particularly forest fires – a subject on which she has recently published a number of valuable treatise for use by the authorities and others in cases of major forest fire events which are all too common during the summer months in Portugal and elsewhere in S. Europe.

Tuesday 06t March 2012 - Magdalena Gorrell Guimaraens - Henry Edward Wilby’s Incredible Voyage.
This presentation is a brief window into the story of Henry Edward Wilby, the son of a prominent 19th century British Merchant of Porto, who with two friends, John Searle and Joseph Clark, purchased a sailing vessel in 1849 and set off on an intrepid voyage around the tip of South America to supply Californian gold miners with staple goods. Trading under the name of Searle, Wilby and Clark, the three young men purchased a three-masted barque, the Bella Pernambucana, filled it with goods for sale and on consignment, sailed for California under the Portuguese flag. The story of their preparations and the voyage itself is based on Henry’s personal diary. Included in this illustrated presentation is a short film of a similar ship as it endures one of several gales around the Horn.
Magdalena was born in Quito, Ecuador, the daughter of an American Foreign Service Officer and a Spanish mother. She arrived in Porto in 1963 and soon afterwards married Bruce Duncan Guimaraens, a British Port Wine shipper (now deceased). A linguist and historian, Magdalena is an International Conference Interpreter and Translator by profession. She is currently on the board of AIIC, the Association of International Conference Interpreters – Geneva, as Member of Council for Portugal. And on the National board of Governors of the Sindicato Nacional da Actividade Turística Tradutores e Intérpretes. She graduated Magna Cum Laude in Humanities and History from the Uni.of Maryland and is a member of the Anglo-Portuguese Historical Society as well as list Administrator for the Yorkshire Surnames List, a database with over 24.000 submissions from online researchers in Yorkshire genealogy. At the present time she is attempting to complete a book on the Guimaraens family’s Anglo-Portuguese roots.

Tuesday 03 April 2012 - Miguel Almeida - Excavating Lagos Slave Cemetery at Valle da Gafaria.
Following on from the excellent talk by Marta Diaz- Guardamino about the church cemetery in Lagos we now have the chance to learn about the darker side in the history of the town.
In 2009 a Dryas team made an extensive rescue excavation at Valle da Gafaria, a site located outside the medieval and modern wall of the city of Lagos. This site, which dates from the 15/16th centuries, has revealed evidence of varied usage over the years. Amongst one of the most significant was an area of urban rubbish deposits covering an area of more than 1.000 sq. metres and a stratigraphic thickness of more than 6 metres. Among different discarded objects, food remains and dead animals, a considerable number of human remains were identified and excavated according to strict archaeo-anthropological protocol. One hundred and fifty five individuals of both sexes were exhumed, - many of them being under the age of 30. The atypical body positions (contrary to Christian rules), the archaeological and historical context of the findings (within an urban dump), and the morphometric analysis of the skulls (inconsistent with any other known native and immigrant populations in S. Portugal) indicated an African origin for these individuals.
An AMS C14 date obtained for one of the earliest individuals to be buried showed that these burials are contemporary with the first historical records of caravels arriving in Lagos with African slaves. Hence the Valle da Gafaria archaeological findings have provided an unique opportunity to document how enslaved people, captured on African shores by Portuguese sailors during the Discoveries period, lived and were treated (even after death) by their European ‘owners’.
Consequently, Dryas has put together a multidisciplinary research team to recover the complex sets of data which is of high historical and anthropological importance. The results document in a very objective way the first moments of the Atlantic slave trade through the preservation in skeletal form of the enslaved people and through the context of their burial. The time of the slave trade was a cruel and inhuman part of Portuguese history and it is without doubt that these unfortunate people, should, through this work, have an opportunity to tell their tale and take their rightful place in history.
Dr. Almeida has a degree in archaeology from Coimbra and a masters in Pre-history and Anthropology from Bordeaux. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. He founded ‘Dryas Arqueológica’ (part of ‘Dryas Octopetala’) to work on archaeological sites in Portugal. Dr. Almeida is at present the CEO of the company and Director of Dryas Archaeology which carries out emergency rescue archaeological projects in Portugal.

Tuesday 08 May 2012 - Miquel Serra and colleagues - Outeira de Circo - Bronze Age site Beja

Tuesday 05 June 2012 - Will Bowden - Caistor Roman town and the Iceni tribe

Further tentative schedule for the autumn of 2012 (may be subject to change)

Tuesday 02 Oct 2012 - Sara Garces and Luiz Oosterbeek - Rock art in the Tagus valley

Tuesday 06 Nov 2012 - Chris Pollard - Portugal and the Spanish Civil War

Tuesday 04 Dec 2012 - Paulo Lima - Neolithic archaeology and rock art