Building Archaeology in rescue archaeology context: the example of Baixinha de Coimbra (Portugal)

Abstract

It is not common in Portugal, within the rescue archaeology context, the inclusion of detailed recordings of buildings to be demolished. Recording and interpretation of standing buildings are almost limited to restoration and preservation projects, mainly affecting monumental buildings. It is therefore that fundamental information for the history of Portuguese cities is being lost. Previously to a building project with huge impact on the current urban city wall of Baixinha de Coimbra, a rescue archaeological work to be carried out in the mentioned area was the singular chance to develop a global archaeological project including both standing building and ground archaeology. The project of Baixinha de Coimbra (currently running, although lands to build on have been not yet acquired) shows: firstly, the relevance and informative potential of civil architecture when considered as stratified object whose understanding is essential to build up the history of urban centres; secondly, the fundamental role to be played by the rescue archaeology within that process of knowing the history of the cities. In that sense, this paper insists on the urgent need of having corpora of materials and building techniques geographically and chronologically contextualised, and on the requirement of «knowing to intervene», converting thus the knowledge of the history of the buildings and its urban development into the main axis of strategic options of the urban developing projects, mainly in historic centres.