A HISTORY OF THE PADRÃO DE SÃO TIAGO AT LÜDERITZ.

Portuguese voyages of discovery in search of a route to India led further and further south along the coastline of Africa. The discovery of a sea route to the countries of South Asia, then generally referred to as the 'Indies', was a chief priority of the Kingdom of Portugal at the end of the Middle Ages. By the time of Henry the Navigator's death in 1460, the Portuguese had reached the Senegal River, and during the reign of King Afonso V the African, they travelled another 2000 miles, reaching the Gulf of Guinea and entering the southern hemisphere for the first time. Portuguese sailors initially marked the places discovered during pioneer expeditions with wooden crosses or inscriptions carved on trees. King João II decreed that these marks should be permanent and last for centuries. Diogo Cão was the first to carry these marker stones, called padrões. The three most successful Portuguese explorers set up a total of 11 padrões on the shores of Africa: Diogo Cão set up four, Bartolomeu Dias left three, and Vasco da Gama erected six padrões, but only four of them in Africa. In today's Namibia, near Lüderitz, Bartolomeu Dias erected a stone padrão on St James Day in 1488. The padrão stood in place for 300 years before it fell over, probably at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Fragments of the broken stone marker were taken as curios in the following decades and ended up in private and public collections. Systematic excavations were carried out in 1953, resulting in the discovery of 12 large and 180 tiny fragments of padrão. These padrão fragments are currently in the National Museum of Namibia inWindhoek. Previously taken pieces of padrão are in museums in Cape Town, Lisbon and Greenwich. A replica now stands in the place of the original padrão. This article traces the history of this padrão, the archaeological research conducted in 1953 and 1982, and considers its significance in its original sociopolitical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]