According to the municipal archaeologist, Diogo Teixeira Dias, the position of the machine gun in the 17th-century monument was the great revelation of the surveys aimed at clarifying the construction period of the defensive structure.
“We already suspected that in a 17th-century fort, which is the Tagarete fort, we would find a machine gun position, a light machine gun shelter from World War II, dated 1941. We have its design, its plan, and we even had a visible trace. So we chose to uncover it, to show it to people, but also to understand what discrepancies there were with what we had in the written documentation,” Diogo Teixeira Dias explained.
The excavations confirmed the suspicions regarding the World War II defensive equipment: “We had already done some tests and realized that what we had on the ground was not exactly the same as what we have in the historical documentation. And, in fact, that’s what we found.”
The decision about the future of the site where the find is located depends on the municipal executive of Vila Franca do Campo, on the island of São Miguel.
“Our technical work is almost finished. Naturally, the decision will take into account our opinion, but now it obviously goes beyond our area of action and moves to the political decision of whether to bury it and uncover it later or to uncover it from now on,” said the archaeologist.
The Mayor of Vila Franca do Campo, Ricardo Rodrigues, admitted to studying a solution to keep the historical revelations exposed: “I think that yes, we have to take advantage and leave visible what everyone can witness and what was part of the history of this fort.”
The mayor also mentioned that archaeology “has a lot to study” in the municipality because in 1522 “there was an earthquake that buried three-quarters” of the locality.
The excavations at the Tagarete fort, also known as Areia and Baixio fort, began on August 5 and end on Friday.
The investigations seek to clarify the construction period of the second largest fortification on the island of São Miguel, which was built to defend the main landing beaches in Vila Franca do Campo and the anchorage of the islet.
Daniela Cabral, a master’s student in Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology, native to Vila Franca do Campo and who was also involved in guiding the work, said that “quite a few things” were found.
They collected “from ceramics to malacofauna, which are mollusks, also vertebrate fauna, which are terrestrial animals, and ichthyofauna, which are fish remains,” she explained.
Regarding more recent ceramics, Daniela Cabral indicated that several were recorded, with emphasis on an older one: “It will probably give a possible dating of the fort, which was what we were aiming for this year.”
Luís Vitorino, a 3rd-year Archaeology student at the University of Coimbra, native to the neighboring municipality of Lagoa, and one of the volunteer participants in the excavations, said that the initiative is “very good” because archaeology in the Azores “is almost non-existent.”
The archaeologists used cutting-edge technology, having recorded the entire excavation process through digital photogrammetry, laser scanning, and 3D modeling.
The research work will continue next year and cover other points inside the wall of the Tagarete fort, which currently presents about 60% of the original structure.