Coastal evolution between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean sea through the study of the roman baths of Las Bóvedas, Marbella, Spain

Abstract

Coastal settlements in the Mediterranean Antiquity were highly dependant on accessibility and natural resources, thus large-scale manufactures were vulnerable when natural conditions fluctuated significantly. For this research, a multidisciplinary team including coastal geomorphologists and archaeologists use remote sensing as well as bibliographic methods to establish the potential shoreline evolution at the Roman Baths of Las Bóvedas in Marbella. In Roman times baths were either domestic or public. Private ones were usually modest but public ones could be large and/or specialised as medicinal. At the confluence of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, a building dedicated to baths was built in the 2nd century CE close to the most extreme reaches of the Antonine Way. Still today the origin of the Baths of Las Bóvedas remains a mystery since they are disproportionately large and complex for private use yet cannot be related to any documented city of the time. Geomorphologically, highly accelerated rates of sediment cut and fill have resulted from catastrophic rates of sea level fluctuations that transformed entire drainage systems and their mouths from estuaries into deltas. This shift not only modified coastal dynamics but resulted in traumatic environmental changes in recent geological timescales that perhaps accelerated the collapse of a society whose levels of prosperity were unparalleled in other Mediterranean and Atlantic shores of the time. In this research, results suggest that: a) the baths must have been located strategically by the shoreline despite 2000 years of coastal evolution and that they may be linked to a much wider network of buildings and infrastructure that perhaps existed at the well documented lost settlement of Cilniana; and b) that these changes compromised natural resources to such an extent that the economic drivers were lost such as fish byproducts (garum), agricultural (olive oil) as well as salt industries that all but disappeared simultaneously.