The Open Day at the Paleolithic Archaeological Site of Vale Boi is scheduled for the 20th of July, organized by the Interdisciplinary Center for Archeology and Evolution of Human Behavior (ICArEHB) of the University of Algarve, in collaboration with the Municipality of Vila do Bispo.
The archaeological site, located near the EN125, between Lagos and Vila do Bispo, will be open to the public, thus offering the opportunity to see in detail the archaeological excavation work, to observe and handle the exhumed artefacts with more than 30 thousand years, and put, in the first person, all the questions to the archaeologists and students who are working in Vale Boi.
The archaeological site was discovered in 1998 as a result of prospecting work in the river valleys of the Costa Vicentina. Located to the east of the Ribeira de Vale Boi (Vila do Bispo municipality), in front of the small town with the same name, the Paleolithic deposit is located about 2 kilometers from the current coastline.
The archaeological remains show a dispersion of more than 10 thousand square meters, occupying the entire slope, which is limited to the east by a limestone outcrop 10 meters high and to the west by the alluvium of the stream.
The archaeological work began in 2000, under the direction of archaeologist Nuno Bicho, from the ICArEHB, and has been guided by intervention in three distinct areas of the deposit, which revealed a long chronological sequence, beginning more than 30 thousand years ago with the oldest elements of our species in Portugal.
In addition to numerous hunting artefacts and daily activities, thousands of bones of hunted animals were also exhumed, including deer, aurochs, horse, wild boar and rabbit that served as food for these hunter-gatherers, as well as lion, wolf, fox and lynx, probably hunted for their furs.
Seafood was also part of the daily life of these first human communities in the Algarve. Also noteworthy, at the archaeological site of Vale Boi, is the presence of mobile art elements, characteristic of the Paleolithic period in the Iberian Peninsula.
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