The “San Giacomo di Galizia” Warship Galleon (1597)—Building Narratives through an Archaeological and Historical Reading of the Ribadeo I Shipwreck

Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).Early November 1597. After an intense combat with four enemy ships, San Giacomo di Galizia (also known as Santiago), a just over 1000-ton galleon, enters the Ribadeo harbour in a terrible state, where it wrecks. This war vessel had been built in Naples in 1590 and sailed the Mediterranean and the Atlantic until it sank. In late November 2011, during an archaeological survey of the dredge area to improve the navigation of the ports in Galicia, a large ship was found and identified as the San Giacomo, which wrecked 414 years prior to its discovery. Several archaeological campaigns permitted a thorough record of the wreck and the recovery of hundreds of objects which this ship carried on its final journey. These artefacts included ceramics, metalwork, and wood, objects which reflected the activities that occurred on board during its short life. Combining an interdisciplinary approach based on artefacts, documents, and chemical analysis, the aim of this paper is to, on the one hand, attempt to reconstruct the sailing itinerary of the ship over its period of use and, on the other, to discuss how these commodities can help to write new narratives about the activities which occurred on board.Archaeological excavation of the Ribadeo I shipwreck took place under the ForSEAdiscovery project (PITN-GA2013-607545). This research received funding of the PIE-CSIC research project “Naufragios Históricos” Ref.: 201910E065; I-LINK “UnderHERITAGE”, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Ref.: LINKB20042; Xunta de Galicia, Dirección Xeral do Patrimonio, and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA); and project TOP Heritage cm (S2018/NMT-4372) from Community of Madrid. Authors acknowledge support from CSIC Interdisciplinary Platform “Open Heritage: Research and Society” (PTI-PAIS)Peer reviewe