Baelo Claudia
About
A dozen salting workshops packed the shoreline of this Baetican port town, their stone vats still holding traces of the tuna-belly garum that made Baelo Claudia's fortune. Archaeologists working the site in 2015 found tuna skin fragments preserved intact in the bottom of a vat, the first such find anywhere in the empire. The Strait of Gibraltar's seasonal tuna runs kept the factories running for centuries.
What happened here
Rows of stone vats sunk into the ground beside the sea, and the smell reaches a long way inland. Small fish and the guts of larger ones are layered with salt and left in the sun for weeks; the liquid that separates off is drawn away as fish sauce and the residue is sold cheaply as paste. Grades run from a luxury sauce that costs more than good wine down to the version bought by everyone else. Tunny is netted in season from lookout towers on the headland, and the fishing, salting, potting and shipping all happen within a few hundred metres. Amphorae are stamped with the maker's name. Towns built on this are rich, and they are built downwind of themselves.
In ancient writing
- Strabo, Geography 3.1.8
The port opposite Africa where the crossing to Tingis is made, on a stretch of coast whose towns live off tunny fishing and salting.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →