0416 - Talk about the dramatic situation of Portuguese Ditched Enclosures

Next week, in Serpa (Alentejo, South Portugal), I will be speaking about the actual situation of Portuguese Ditched Enclosure in the region, where these sites have their major concentration and reach the higher monumentality in Portugal.
It is an event integrated in the commemoration of the  International day of Monuments and Sites, that, unfortunately, we have to use to show what we don't do and should be doing regarding heritage preservation.
I will be talking about the drama that Prehistoric ditched enclosures are facing. They represented the social trajectory of Neolithic communities until the end of the 3rd millennium BC, when this path collapsed and ditched enclosures with it. They didn't do well with the transition from the 3rd to the 2nd millennium BC.
Well, again, they are not doing well with another millennium transition, now from the 2nd to the 3rd millennium AC. In Alentejo, they were born with agriculture (not out of agriculture, as some argue), and their archaeological remains are now being destroyed by it.
I will try to show their historical, cultural and social value, and show that are several that still can be saved from the cultural, social, environmental and heritage disaster that is happening in Alentejo, sponsored by the Portuguese Government.

0408 - Perdigões web musuem blog

Perdigões ditched enclosure has now a new blog, called Perdigões Museum, to display online to the general public some of the more exquisite archaeological findings in the site.

You may find it here.

0368 - Salvada in the press

The impact in the large enclosure of Salvada, that was discussed here some posts ago, is in the front page of a national paper and has a significant report inside. As it happens in many other things in life, only when some bad happens things get to the front page. That is the criteria of the media, maybe because that is the criteria of the majority of the public.

Nevertheless, it is an important report for the Portuguese Prehistoric Enclosures, for they dramatically need this public exposure to be known, protected and start to be socially active as the important heritage and economic and cultural resource they are.

0337 - Enclosures, Identity and heritage: The Fraga da Pena case.

Fraga da Pena (Fornos de Algodres, Guarda) was discovered for Archaeology by me (and two “Isabels”) in 1991. Between that year and 1998 I excavated the site and produced a scientific discourse about it (part of my PhD thesis). It is now an important context in Portuguese archaeology regarding the bell beaker phenomena and the late 3^rd millennium BC, as well as for the debate regarding enclosures in Iberia.

That work gave way to a project of public display that tried to bring the site back to a socially active role (see here what was done). Today, it is used as the main banner of the Municipality page on Facebook (where we can read “A history that touch us”) and its profile is in the logo (left side) of the municipality (curiously with the representation of the sun, something that might have been important in the site’s role in Prehistory (see here).

I am happy. The Fraga is back as a meaningful place and not just for archaeologists. Job done. My thanks to all that have contributed to this, and they were many: from Portugal (obviously the majority), Spain, Czeck Republic, Hungary, Turkey, France, Belgium, USA, Norway, Wales, Poland…

0294 – Visiting Perdigões enclosure

In 2013, in the context of an archaeological meeting in Évora, a small group of participants visited Prdigões enclosure. In this photo, where the winter solstice orientation is being pointed out by me, we can recognize Primitiva Bueno, Rodrigo Balbín, Luc Laporte, Chris Scarre and Rosa Barroso Bermejo. 

The Perdigões Research Program is always pleased to receive visits from colleagues and other interested persons. This year excavation will be from 20 July to 15 August, so if you are interested in visiting please contact the Nia-Era department (antoniovalera@era-arqueologia.pt or geral@era-arqueologia.pt).

0217 – Almadan #18

The journal Almadan has just been published. Public presentation was today.

Inside there is a paper of mine making a synthesis (a discourse for specialists but also for general public) of the “state of the art” regarding prehistoric ditched enclosures in Portugal: a historical review of the research and dynamics of discovery, an evaluation of interpretative discourses, a censure of some situations regarding preservation and some notes on the potential for public display. 

0216 - Communicating interpretations

I come back to Santa Vitoria virtual reconstitution.

I definitely do not agree with it. There is no evidence of a bank inside the ditch. If there was a bank, some pits would have been covered by it; the inside area would have been highly restreated and, most important, there would have been evidences of erosion inside the ditch from a bank built with the geological material. Instead, we have inside the ditch layers of structured depositions and occupation features.

But my point here is that the impact on public opinion of words and pictures is not the same. I want to argue that drawing a scene is more powerful than just describe it by words. Our society is, more than ever, dependent on visual senses. It is easier to memorize an image than a written discourse.

That should give a higher sense of responsibility to the visual reconstitutions of archaeological sites, and in this particular context, of ditched enclosures. What might be presented as hypothesis in discourse seems to be a certain fact when presented in a drawing or animation.

In time, written things became more valued than spoken ones. Today images seem to have a lead. And where discourse might face a doubt, image tends to receive uncritical adherence.  

I don’t know if the readers of this blog agree with this, but I think that we should have this in mind when we decide to use visual representations of our ideas for these prehistoric sites (or any other sites).

0191 – Displaying Perdigões

It is not a proper museum. Is more like a small exhibition that function as an interpretation centre. It opened in 2004, in the medieval tower of Esporão, and is one of the two exhibitions specifically dedicated to prehistoric ditched enclosures in Portugal (the other one is in Alcalar, Algarve).

I was involved in the conception of that exhibition. And I am not comfortable with it anymore. In the last nine years the research in Perdigões has increased and what we know now is not reflected in that exhibition. But, even so, a visit will give a fair notion of the site and of its importance for the understanding of Neolithic and Chalcolithic communities of the region.

Some updating is expected this year. But what I would like to stress is that this effort of display is totally financed by private initiative, by the company who ones the site (Esporão S.A.) and by the company who is leading its research program (Era), although public support also exist for research.

This is a project that reaches the age of 15 this year. Slowly, it has grown to become one of the most important projects of Portuguese archaeology, with national and international expression.

In this weekend there was another moment of public display. It was in the “Festa da Arqueologia” that took place in the ruins of Carmo convent (the headquarters of the Portuguese Association of Archaeologists). There, ideas were shared and the problems of public display debated.

0187 - Castro de Santiago also at the museum

Castro de Santiago walled enclosure was the first site I excavated in Fornos de Algodres, from 1988 to 1996 and in 2006. As Fraga da Pena, the site is displayed in the local archaeological museum. Here are the posters that can be seen there.

I call your attention to the last one. To a specific situation, where Santiago is an interesting case: the presence of all “chaine operatoire” for the production, use and reuse of polished stone tools.

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. 

0174 – Displaying recent information

In the last few months, in the context of the NIA’s project “Plans of ditched enclosures and Neolithic cosmologies: an approach through landscape, archaeoastronomy and geophysics – 2” (recently renewed) several new ditched enclosures have been identified through Google Earth. I have been noticing some of those discoveries in this blog. And here is another one, from Reguengos de Monsaraz municipality.

It is now time for starting to publish some of the information already collected. So, a poster will be presented at the congress of the Portuguese Association of Archaeologists in November (published in the proceedings) with the title “New ditched enclosures in South Portugal: Google Earth was a tool for a systematic prospection” (by António Valera & Tiago do Pereiro) and a paper will be presented at the same meeting regarding the “Chronology of Recent Prehistory ditched enclosures in Portugal (by António Valera). In the journal Almadan, to be edited next July, there will be a synthesis paper on Portuguese ditched enclosures: “Ditched enclosures of Portuguese Recent Prehistory: research, discourses, preservation and public disclosure” (by António Valera).

0100 - Going public

I talked about this before: the archaeology of prehistoric enclosures (as all archaeology actually) needs to go public. In fact, its relevance (and the relevance of its professionals) critically depends in the capacity of produce some valued social return, and there are some interesting projects all over Europe working this way.

In Portugal, we are just beginning, and Perdigões is a leading project on that matter, assuming that research has its own funding future and social justification in becoming relevant to the general public. But we are also aware that its relevance depends back in regular research of quality.

So, at Perdigões there is a path that is being walked with conviction in social responsibility. And that has been noticed here and there.

Even Google caught us excavating last year (2011). It was the first week of field work. And we will be there again this year. Next week we will be preparing the excavation that will start at July 16^th. You can fallow it then in its own blog (see the side bar).

0062 - Talks about Perdigões (I)

PROGRAMA GLOBAL DE INVESTIGAÇÃO ARQUEOLÓGICA DOS PERDIGÕES - INARP

Perdigões enclosure (Reguengos de Monsaraz) is one of the important archaeological contexts of the Iberian Peninsula Recent Prehistory and on that has been researched for more than a decade.

The questions that it rises and allows to developed are of significant relevance for the knowledge of Neolithic and Chalcolithic communities as well to the development of disciplinary theoretical thinking and the social models built to deal with those societies and their historical dynamics.

Several institutions and individual researchers, national and international, participate in this open and enclosing project, known at international level. Now, ERA Arqueologia, through its research unit (NIA), decided to promote the project within the academic student community.

So, a series of talks will be promoted at ERA, regarding the research, results and problems at Perdigões. In summary, trying to present what’s is going on at this magnificent site.

Academic students are the target public, but other interest people can assist if there are available places. Attending is free, submitted to inscriptions send to the email: antoniovalera@era-arqueologia.pt.

The talks can be repeated at other institutions solicitation.

Talks about Perdigões (I)

Program:

18th November 2011, from 17 to 19

- Building the Research Global Program of Perdigões
- Geophysics, spatial organization and temporalities at Perdigões
- Digging ditches 1, 3, 4 and 6: problems and interpretations.

25th November 2011, from 17 to 19

- Contexts of Funerary practices at Perdigões: a Eastern Necropolis, pits, ditches and cremation deposits.
- Material culture and interregional interaction
- Perdigões in the context of south Portugal enclosures.

Local: ERA Arqueologia (Cç, Santa Catarina, 9c Cruz Quebrada-Dafundo).
Speaker: António Carlos Valera

Inscriptions (till a maximum of ten) addressed to: antoniovalera@era-arquelogia.pt

0051 - Fraga da Pena’s job

As I have put it several times, heritage only exists when is socially activated and lived. Archaeology, like other sciences in general, has its social justification in the social recurrence that provides.

Prehistoric enclosures have a double emblematic role in this issue. In one hand they are a kind of heritage that needs to be known, comprehended and valued by people, as a main archaeological phenomenology to understand prehistoric communities of Neolithic and Chalcolithic. Second, as so many of them did in the past, they can be used to bring people together, generating aggregation, reinforcing identities and a general common sense of heritage preservation and recognition of its social values and roles.

This happed last Saturday at the walled enclosure of Fraga da Pena (Fornos de Algodres) for the 3rd time in six years.



As the scientific research saw it, this huge and magnificent granitic tor must have had stories, myths, associated to its existent and majestic domain over the local landscape. When the two walled enclosure were built, some 4200 years ago, this was already a “place”: a local with a name and a history (not a modern geological one, but a mythological one), part of the local landscape semantics.

How to pass this view of a group of rocks and stone walls to common rural local people and general public?



In the absence of a real one, a legend was created and published in 2005, using other local myths and the scientific discourse displayed about the site. The legend, in a more pleasant way, makes people understand that this was a special place for special social practices and important for past world views.



In that year the legend was theatrically played at Fraga da Pena, for local community. Last Saturday another show based on it was performed there, bringing more than 300 persons to the place and, in a way, restoring its earliest social function: aggregating people in social practices that reinforce identities and a sense of territoriality, developing a consciousness of common memories and senses of belonging and, in summary, making heritage doing its job.

0022 - Disclosure the enclosures

Report on Xancra´s geophysical survey published on “O Público” (click in the image to enlarge)

Although ditched enclosures are known for a long time in Europe, and in Portugal since the eighties of the XX century, the general Portuguese public ignores this kind of archaeological sites and their scientific and heritage importance. People know or heard of megalithic monuments, but they don´t have any awareness of enclosures, of their relations to megalithism, of the large sizes they may reach, of the complexity they may present, of the fascination they may have on us.
This is a problem at several levels. One of them, is that people don’t understand the need (and the costs) to preserve and study this kind of sites. They were not educated to value them, therefore they don´t value them.

So, it is the responsibility of any research project on the matter to assume its own publicity and to promote the disclosure of the produced knowledge. As someone once said, the goal of scientific knowledge is to become common sense. Only shared it gains its social relevance and be in a position to require for social value and support.

And ditched enclosures can provide us with a lot of important and attractive stories to tell about Prehistory and about ourselves. As they did in the past, they can help bringing people together around heritage value, especially in times of difficulties, where culture tends to be undervalued.