Creiro Fish-Salting Factory

Creiro

Garum FactoryLusitania · Sesimbra, PortugalBuilt 25 BCE

About

Above a secluded beach in the Arrábida hills, Creiro packed a fish-salting workshop, warehouses, housing, and baths inside one walled compound overlooking the Sado estuary's mackerel runs. It's one of roughly twenty salting factories that made the Setúbal coast the Roman Empire's busiest hub for cured fish and garum. Archaeologists working here since 1987 have mapped the complete factory plan, down to the brine vats where the catch was packed in salt. The site was first identified in 1907 by antiquarian António Inácio Marques da Costa.

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.