Under the Mediterranean: The Medieval River and Islamic Shipsheds of Seville

Presented at the Honor Frost Foundation Conference on Mediterranean Maritime Archaeology in October 2017, this recording begins with a brief fragment of a preceding paper on submerged ashlar blocks before turning to a presentation by Carlos and Fernando on the medieval river and naval arsenals of Seville.

The speakers first trace the shifting course of the river in Seville through paleoclimatological and archaeological evidence. An anchor found in the Plaza Nueva indicates that merchant vessels could use the central channel in Late Antiquity. Radiocarbon dating places a riverboat found with its oars in situ to the late tenth or early eleventh century; the speakers suggest it was lost in a flood during river avulsion. By the eleventh century only small boats could pass through the channel, and by the twelfth it had silted up and been filled with debris and Islamic amphorae, before a thirteenth-century Christian convent was built over the site.

The second part addresses Seville's medieval shipsheds. Excavations in the 1990s by Fernando at the thirteenth-century Christian shipsheds of San Jorge demonstrated that they were not built over earlier Islamic structures. To locate the Almohad Islamic shipsheds, Fernando examined the sixteenth-century Royal Mint area and the fortification walls by the Torre de la Plata. Because the walls have foundations below river level, double merlons on both faces, and two large open arches, the speakers propose that this enclosure protected an interior arsenal, later extended with an outer wall and a second tower when the river shifted 50 metres westward.

In the discussion, participants including David, Simon, and Pierre consider the Dar al-Sana' in Arab chronicles, possible continuity from Roman shipsheds, and the dimensions of the entrance arches and bays.