0183 - Two years of Portuguese Prehistoric Enclosures (PPE)

Today this blog reaches the age of two years. And here is, to commemorate, a possible new ditch enclosure (seen in two different worked satellite images), just detected yesterday.

During 182 posts I tried to display information and ideas about the Portuguese walled and ditched enclosures to a large audience, national and international. Old and recent data, problems and perspectives, many issues were presented here. And the recent new developments were shared almost live.

The reached audience is not astonishing, but it is interesting: almost 44000 visits in two years, an average of 22000 a year, more than 1800 visits a month and about 60 per day. Not entirely bad for such a specific theme, unknown to the general public. 

One of the goals was to make available information about PPE to an international audience. The statistics say that half of the visits were from Portugal and the other half was from foreign countries. So, even that is not too bad. Here are the top ten countries where visitors came from:

Portugal 21543 United States   6140 Spain   4352 Russia   1503 United Kingdom   1452 Germany     925 France     827 Brazil     328 Ukraine     184 Holland     174

In face of this, I think Portuguese enclosures and their research is a little beet more known outside Portuguese borders. And, I believe, to the surprise of some.

So I feel stimulated to continue. The only absolute failure was my inability to bring more Portuguese archaeologists to collaborate in this initiative, as the “wish to enclose you” statement aimed. The comments are also few. However, these circumstances are not quite surprising, since the Portuguese archaeology always had a difficult relationship with the need of displaying knowledge to the general public (or even to a specialized one). So, I have to work a little beet more this area in the next few years.

Nevertheless, the blog goes into its third year “in shape”. And the months to come until the end of this year are quite promising, with expected new information and publications and so much to debate about these sites. I try to continue to make an echo of that in this page.

And thanks to the regular and irregular visitors.