Metal Objects Were Much Desired: A Sixteenth-Century Shipwreck Cargo off the Coast of Esposende (Portugal) and the Importance of Studying Ship Cargos

Journal of Maritime Archaeology (2024) 19:23–40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-024-09388-5 RESEARCH Metal Objects Were Much Desired: A Sixteenth‑Century Shipwreck Cargo off the Coast of Esposende (Portugal) and the Importance of Studying Ship Cargos Tânia Manuel Casimiro1 · Christopher Dostal2 · Filipe Castro3 Ivone Magalhães4 · Elsa Teixeira4 · Elisa Frias‑Bulhosa5 · Ana Almeida4 · Accepted: 22 February 2024 / Published online: 20 March 2024 © The Author(s) 2024 Abstract During winter storms in 2014 and 2017, strong waves exposed hundreds of timbers and artefacts at the Belinho beach, in the North of Portugal. These ship remains were later discovered to belong to a 16th-century shipwreck, probably originating from Northern Europe. This paper aims to discuss the importance of cargo analysis through the study of the material culture associated with that site, consisting mainly of hundreds of pewter, brass, lead, iron, and stone artefacts. Most of these objects seem to have belonged to the ship’s cargo and are tied to a European trade system reflecting economic, cultural, and symbolic behaviours. Keywords Cargo · Pewter · Brass · Shipwreck * Tânia Manuel Casimiro Christopher Dostal Filipe Castro Ana Almeida Ivone Magalhães Elsa Teixeira Elisa Frias‑Bulhosa 1 HTC CFE NOVA University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal 2 Texas A&M University, College Station, USA 3 HTC CFE University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal 4 Esposende Municipality, Esposende, Portugal 5 Univeristy of Porto, Porto, Portugal 13 Vol.:(0123456789) 24 Journal of Maritime Archaeology (2024) 19:23–40 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to study the cargo from a shipwreck found in Northern Portugal. Although ships’ cargos are frequently mentioned in archaeological publications, seldom, if ever, are those cargos approached theoretically, or are their importance to maritime archaeology debated. The reason seems simple when we consider that archaeologists usually study material culture within a system of cultural, social, and economic relations and entanglements between human and non-human agents and cargos, except when the study of “when and where they were made and by whom” cannot provide any extra information, especially with regard to use (Harding 2016, 5; Hodder 2012; Appadurai 1986). So how do we analyse this cargo in a way that provides more than just a quantification and description of artefacts, and discuss it beyond its economic importance and role in the trade networks? The answer is quite tricky, mainly because we lack knowledge of all the human-object relations, especially from the moment they entered the vessel. Of course, we can infer their potential use, which we did. However, when the ship was wrecked, the biography of those artefacts, or their lives, was interrupted. In his seminal paper “The cultural biography of things”, I. Kopytoff asks the necessary questions to analyse the biography of any given commodity: “Where does the thing come from, and who made it? What has been its career so far, and what do people consider to be an ideal career for such things? What are the recognized ages or periods of a thing’s life, and what are the cultural markers for them? How does the thing’s use change with its age, and what happens to it when it reaches the end of its usefulness?” (1986, 66–67). When a ship is lost, its cargo’s projected life is interrupted, and thus we cannot provide an answer to all these questions. This interruption makes it difficult for certain cultural aspects related to use and consumption to be debated. These are the very same debates that archaeologists are so fond of in households, settlements, or even concerning other artefacts found on board a ship where they had a specific use, as in the physician’s box on the Mary Rose, or an anchor, or a water barrel (Gardiner and Alen 2005). Debating the use of individual items can create patterns which allow archaeologists to construct narratives about the past and the people living in those spaces. For the Belinho wreck, we will try to reconstruct some of these narratives, especially in relation to the ship and its discovery. Where a lost ship’s cargo is concerned, it does not follow the typical pattern of “objects in the past, as in the present, came into being, had a use-life, and went out of use” (Harding 2016, 8). In fact, cargos seem to reflect precisely the opposite, they are often objects that have had a premature death. If cargo does not permit the study of the “complexity of relations between people and their material world,” it is necessary to study the artefact’s movements, and the artefacts in motion in variable geographies. And while we cannot use them to study identities as consumer goods, we can question “why and how things moved in the first place”? (EscribanoRuiz et al. 2021, 14). Although not identified, the Belinho 1 ship is believed to be Iberian. It can be dated roughly in the first half of the sixteenth century, based on the style of artefacts, hull fragments and artillery. Through the hull and the artillery point to an Iberian-built ship, the cargo can tell us about the point of origin and the itinerary of the ship’s last voyage, one of the fundamental pieces of information needed to understand a ship’s identity. In the specific case of the Belinho 1 shipwreck, although studies on its construction may have suggested that it was an Iberian ship, what does it mean to be an Iberian ship? Recently Sara Rich questioned the factors that form the identity of an Iberian ship. What makes it Iberian? Being built in Portugal or Spain? What about being built in an occupied territory by Portuguese shipwrights, or by someone 13 Journal of Maritime Archaeology (2024) 19:23–40 25 following traditional Iberian shipbuilding methods? What about a ship built abroad but commandeered or purchased by the Spanish or Portuguese navy? (Rich 2022, 63). To those who study the history of wooden shipbuilding in Europe, an Iberian ship is a ship built according to a set of rules that were traditional in the region during a certain period. These features, which are comprised of construction techniques, particular hull shapes, and design templates form a region-specific typology, despite occasional overlap with other culture-specific ship designs. These construction features have been called ‘architectural signatures’ (Rieth 2021, 2624) and are the equivalent of Richard Dawkins’ concept of memes in that they are either spread or contained in organic, non-intentional ways (Dawkins 1976). To historians, an Iberian ship is a different thing, based on Iberian cultural identity. This discussion is far too broad to be approached in the present paper, though there are cultural similarities shared by Spain and Portugal in the early modern age that can be identified in the archaeological record (Casimiro 2019; Castro 2008). Certain artefacts, like ceramics, jewellery, coinage, and others, can indicate an Iberian identity, t (...truncated)