Sunday, August 31, 2014

0262 – Salvada measures

Salvada is one of the Portuguese big ditched enclosures. Well, by present standards of Iberian Enclosures, we should say it is a middle sized enclosure. It has about 500m diameter and about 17.5 ha.

I provide now some new measures, regarding the outside ditches. Based on aerial images, it is possible to say that the distance between the two outside ditches is around 10m (quite similar to Perdigões, where the outside ditches are 11m apart).

The inside ditch at Salvada is a sinuous one, with patterned semicircular lobules, measuring about 10m wide each one, amazingly similar to the general measures of the lobules at Xancra enclosure.




Naturally these measures have some incertitude due to the fact that they were taken in the blurred aerial images. But the proximity to the Pergigões distance of the outside ditches and the similarities with the measures of Xancra lobules are interesting. I will explore more this path.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

0261 – Portuguese enclosures go to Germany


Next November, and by invitation, I will be lecturing in the University of Kiel, Germany, in a biweekly master dedicated to historical landscapes.

There, the developments of the ditched enclosures research in Portugal during the last two decades will be presented, and the social roles of these sites will be discussed.

The main goal is to contribute to the international display of the Portuguese recent research on ditched enclosures, a work that has been rising considerable curiosity and interest in several European countries where this general phenomena is present and studied for a long time now.

This is a task that I have been developing in the context of my work at the research department (NIA) of Era Arqueologia Company.

Friday, August 15, 2014

0260 - Gate at Perdigões ditch 10


This is a projection of the drawing of the gate detected in ditch10 at Perdigões. It is a large gate (about 7 meters wide) and it is located in the west side of the enclosure. Due to the topography of the natural theater where the site is, a person entering in the enclosure through this gate would have in front, as a stage, the megalithic landscape of Reguengos de Monsaraz, with the hill of Monsaraz in the horizon. But if that person was going in the opposite direction, and at the late afternoon, then the horizon would be the limits of the natural basin and he would have the setting sun in his eyes.


At Perdigões, gates are more than simple passages. Their location generates meaningful perspectives of the landscape. 

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

0259 - Interesting...

... finding regarding the figurines from Perdigões enclosure here.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

0258 – Return with a new one


I’ve been away from this space for several weeks, mainly because I was in excavations in the ditched enclosure of Perdigões. It is now time to come back and recover the usual posting regularity. And nothing better than coming back with a new discovery in Alentejo: another small circular ditched enclosure in Beja district. Courtesy of Tiago do Pereiro.