0220 – Juromenha 1 ditched enclosure

Location: Alandroal municipality, Évora district, Alentejo, South Portugal)
Chronology: Late Neolithic
Bibliographic references: (Calado e Roque, 2013)

The ditched enclosure of Juromenha 1 was detected and surveyed in the context of the Alqueva dam mitigation process, in the early XXI century. The survey revealed a plan that suggests a wavy sinuous ditch, with a linear one running parallel. 

Plan of Juromenha 1 (after Calado e Roque, 2013)

The sinuous ditch has a “v” profile, with 2 meters wide and 1,8 meters deep. Four radiocarbon dates put this ditch between 3400-2900 BC.

Ditch section (after Calado e Roque, 2013)

If wavy ditches became more frequent in the 3^rd millennium BC in Alentejo, Juromenha 1 clearly shows (as Águas Frias and Ponte da Azambuja also do) that this design emerged in a Neolithic context, where we must search for the reasons that will allow us to explain and interpret these layouts. And not in the chalcolithic walled bastions, as once was supposed.