Ditch and entrances to hypogea crypts in the north wall.
At Carrascal 2, near Porto Torrão complex of
enclosures, a chalcolithic ditch was partially excavated by ERA Arqueologia S.A. and raveled an uncommon
situation.
The ditch, with 2 meters deep and about 4 meters wide,
presented a base sectioned in rectangular shapes with a fireplace and in the north side a sequence
of hypogea, at least two of them with access through entrances excavated from
the side wall of the ditch.
One of the entrances was close by an agglomeration of
stones and another by a schist slab. The first third of the filling of the
ditch revealed several layers of pavements of circulation, revealing that the
ditch functioned as an access atrium to the hypogea.
Over the last pavement, two depositions of human
cremation remains were recorded, demonstrating the importance of this specific funerary
practice in the 3rd millennium C, just like is being corroborated in
Perdigões enclosure.
This kind of articulation of ditches and funerary crypts
is new in Iberian Chalcolithic, but shows how diversified practices and
structures related to death can be in this period, namely in the areas of the
large complexes of ditched enclosures.
A preliminary paper on this context (still in press)
can be obtained here
Bottom of the ditch and sequence of circulation pavements with the detail of a deposition of a shell at the entrance of the central hypogeum.
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