Ditch and wall from Salgada (after Manuel Calado, http://crookscape.blogspot.com/).Location: Borba municipality, Évora district, Alentejo, South Portugal)
Chronology: Chalcolithic
Bibliographic references: (Calado &Rocha, 2007)
From Salgada just a few references are available, since the excavations are still to be published. The public notes speak of a site with a ditch, but also with two rows of stone walls. That makes Salgada the second Portuguese site that has ditched and walled enclosures (the other is Monte da Ponte), but information is scarce, so we don’t know if these structures are contemporaneous or just followed in time.
One interesting aspect, though, is the description of the ditch: “a poligonal ditch, with an entrance, facing eastwards, some 5 m large, where, in a late moment, it has been cut a narrow channel, connecting both ends of the ditch. The ditch itself has been cut in independent portions, recalling the british causewayed enclosures, though in this case, those parts are connected in sequence.” (CALADO, M. (2006), “Digging up a monument”, Gema Blog, (http://crookscape.blogspot.com/).
Apart from the eastern orientation of the gate (important in the context of my project on astronomic orientation of enclosures), the “independent cutting” of parts of the ditch seems to support the idea of a modular architecture (see here).
Salagada is, therefore, an important site for several issues regarding enclosures in South Portugal. We will be waiting with expectation for the publication of the results of the excavations.
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