Final considerarions: the first 15 years of research at La Draga

Abstract

Excavations began at the Early Neolithic Cardial facies lakesíde settlement of La Draga (Banyoles, Pla de l'Estany, Catalonia) in 1990. The first phase lasted until 2005 and was under the scientific supervision of the Museu Arqueologic Comarcal de Banyoles and the Centre d'Arqueologia Subaquatica de Catalunya (Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya). A second phase (2008-2013) is now being undertaken with the additional collaboration of the UAB and the CSIC. The first two years of thís new project have been devoted to carrying out an intensive pneumatic probe survey of the whole circumference of the lake, except for the Banyoles side where the buildings prevent it. The final three years will be devoted to a new campaign in a new terrestrial area, Sector O, to the south of the previous Sector B, which has given us such good results. In the approximately one hundred surveys carried out on the lake shores in 2008 and 2009 we found evidence (C-14 datings) ot occupations or trequentations at the beginning of the Middle Neolithic or the Full Neolithic and the Late Bronze Age at certain points on the western side of the Estany. Those possible occupations can be added to those already known for the Upper Palaeolithic (the Aurignacian of Els Prats Comuns, below Can Morgat, Porqueres) or those of the Late Chalcolithic (Pyrenean Campaniform) and the First lron Age opposite the lakeside Romanesque church of Santa Maria de Porqueres. All this gives us a much more complex víew of the prehistoria occupation of the shores of the Estany de Banyoles that lasted, with few gaps, from the Upper Palaeolithíc to the lberian, Roman and mediaeval periods.