LOST ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE: VIRTUAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE MEDIEVAL CASTLE OF SAN SALVADOR DE TODEA

Abstract

The medieval castle of San Salvador de Todea constitutes a remarkable paradigm for the rock castles of Galicia and the northwest of Spain, attending to its features but also to the destruction it was subjected to. The hill where it stands was the object of various archaeological interventions between 2016 and 2018, that identified the site as a medieval fortress and recovered part of its structures. San Salvador de Todea is one of the few 12th-15th centuries medieval castles in Galicia subjected to consecutive interventions and actively studied. Although the excavations provided an important amount of information about the chronology, distribution, material, culture and even diet of the inhabitants, the castle interpretation is complex. The preserved remains correspond to the foundations of the structures, mainly a few walls and a high amount of carvings scattered over the hill. This paper gathers the results of the investigation developed to create a reconstructive hypothesis for the castle and its materialization in a digital model, as a way to interpret and understand its structure. To achieve this aim, the authors combined the analysis of the archaeological data and the geomorphology of the hill, with the study of fortresses with similar disposition and chronology, and the appliance of architectonical rules, in a multidisciplinary study. One crucial objective has been to generate a reasonable, justified and scientific model of the castle, useful as an instrument to study and comprehend this type of construction. The resulting model shows the disposition, height and entity of the castle structures, the transit areas and indoor spaces; it also provides new data to calculate the visibility and predominance of the construction over the landscape, among other fundamental data. Finally, to ensure the rigour and scientific approach of the reconstruction, we utilised a scale of certainty level to show the results, along with photorealistic textures to recreate the probable aspect of the castle.