It was published the volume 1 of the series of monographs of Perdigões ditched enclosure. It reports only to the Neolithic phase of the site. It can be download here.
Showing posts with label Publications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Publications. Show all posts
Sunday, January 6, 2019
0412 - Perdigões publication
It was published the volume 1 of the series of monographs of Perdigões ditched enclosure. It reports only to the Neolithic phase of the site. It can be download here.
Monday, December 3, 2018
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Thursday, October 27, 2016
0356 - New master thesis on Perdigões enclosure
In October
18th, a new master thesis on Perdigões enclosures was presented:
“Exploring
Chalcolithic diet and mobility of humans and animals from Perdigões site”, by
Indre Zalaite.
It was
presented at University of Évora, in ARCHMAT program (ERASMUS MUNDUS MASTER IN
ARCHaeological MATerials Science) and was also part of the project on mobility
at Perdigões enclosures (see here) approved and financed by the Portuguese
Science Foundation.
It is a
first output of that project, which results will soon be published, product of
the collaboration of the three institutions involved in the project integrated
in the Global Program of Archaeological Research of Perdigões: ERA Arqueologia,
Hércules Laboratory – Uévora and ICArEHB-UAlg. Center.
Friday, March 25, 2016
0339 - And another paper on Portuguese Ditched Enclosures
Now about the relations of those sites with funerary contexts at several scales (from cosmology and landscapes to specific funerary structures). It is available in Academia and Research Gate.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Monday, March 7, 2016
0335 - The twilight of enclosures
A paper that was recently published about the trajectory of ditched enclosures in western Iberia:
Here are the Final Remarks:
However, the abrupt disappearance of enclosures in the last centuries of the 3rd millennium BC is suggesting that some event-like situation may have interfered with that trajectory of social change, but the archaeological record, namely the anthropological one, do not show signs of clear generalized conflict or disease and evidence of climate changes significant enough to be responsible for triggering structural social changes are not suggested by the scarce available palaeoenvironmental data. An environmental impact in the last centuries of the 3rd millennium may not be ruled out, but is not yet demonstrated in this region and especially would not justify the social changes already in course (like the structural ideological changes behind the progressively substitution of collective burials by individual ones). It could however help to understand a sudden demographic break down, a reorganization of settlement patterns and territorialities and a temporary collapse of large scale trade networks. But why enclosures, namely the ditched enclosures, were built no more? For that we must have a cultural answer: the social reasons that were behind their appearance and development (and that were related to the Neolithic cosmologies and to the ways they embodied the social life – Valera, 2012b) were no longer there in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. Immanent social developments and external environmental causes may be combined to explain the abrupt changes and the outcome observable at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, but the relative weight of each element is difficult to evaluate at the moment.
There is also the question of the divergent trajectories presented by some walls enclosure in the Center and North Portugal, namely Zambujal, Castanheiro do Vento and Castelo Velho, where these sites remain occupied and wall construction continues. It is not clear, however, if this traduces in fact continuity or if the occupations present different characteristics and are in some way integrated in new forms of territorial organization. In fact, these continuities are the exception, not the rule and like in the South, changes in several dimensions of the social organization can be appreciated by the beginning of the 2nd millennium: the abandonment of the practice of collective burials, the end of the production of iconographic materials, the decay of large scale trade networks, a profound transformation of the ceramic equipment and an increase of the production of metal weaponry frequently associated to individual status is also documented, especially in Estremadura. So it is not totally clear if the continuity of the occupation with building activity in some walled enclosures is traducing different regional socio-economic trajectories or just local and punctual peculiarities of a more general trend of social change.
In spite of the significant developments of the last decades in the research of social complexity in the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic of western Iberia, there is still missing important and consistent information about what happened in the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC and about the nature of the break of the previous social trajectories. Answers, therefore, have been relaying essentially in the logical formats of theoretical models, frequently with weak empirical support. Interdisciplinary research specifically orientated to this problem is needed, namely to obtain well dated and characterized site occupations of the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC, to appraise the population of the period in demographic terms and to adequately evaluate and measure climate trends, before we can more confidently talk about this process of social change."
Valera, A.C. (2015), "Social change in the late 3rd
millennium BC in Portugal: The twilight of enclosures". In: H. Meller/R.
Risch/R. Jung/H. W. Arz (eds.), 2200 BC – Ein Klimasturz als Ursache für den
Zerfall der Alten Welt? 2200 BC – A climatic breakdown as a cause for the
collapse of the old world?. 7. Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag vom 23. Bis 26.
Oktober 2014 in Halle (Saale). 7th Archaeological Conference of Central Germany
October 23-26, 2013 in Halle (Saale). Tagungen des Landesmuseums für
Vorgeschichte Halle 13,1–2 (Halle [Saale].
Bela Vista 5. One of the latest ditched enclosures of western Iberia 3rd Millennium BC.
Here are the Final Remarks:
"In Portugal,
especially in the Centre-South, the end of the 3rd millennium BC
also marks the terminus of the social path that was developing since the Late Neolithic.
Is this a direct consequence of a climate break down, of incompatibilities of
the global social system or both?
What
follows immediately at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC shows
that the operated change was of structural scale, affecting the social and the
economic, but also the ideological, the cosmological and the ontological
dimensions of communities, their ways of organizing the territories and building
meaningful landscapes (as it happens with the enclosures of Perdigões and the
megalithic monuments in the Ribeira do Álamo valley) and, most probably,
affecting their demographic composition. Some of those changes can be traced
back to the third quarter of the 3rd millennium BC, namely the
increase of social differentiation and a progressive emergence of individuality
in funerary practices. But during that second half of the millennium
enclosures, one of the emblematic expressions of Neolithic trajectories, maintain
their social role and through their architectures and social practices, were
still organizing the landscapes and the social life. So structural changes were
in course during the second half of the 3rd millennium BC and these
changes cannot be explain by hexogen conditions to the social system.However, the abrupt disappearance of enclosures in the last centuries of the 3rd millennium BC is suggesting that some event-like situation may have interfered with that trajectory of social change, but the archaeological record, namely the anthropological one, do not show signs of clear generalized conflict or disease and evidence of climate changes significant enough to be responsible for triggering structural social changes are not suggested by the scarce available palaeoenvironmental data. An environmental impact in the last centuries of the 3rd millennium may not be ruled out, but is not yet demonstrated in this region and especially would not justify the social changes already in course (like the structural ideological changes behind the progressively substitution of collective burials by individual ones). It could however help to understand a sudden demographic break down, a reorganization of settlement patterns and territorialities and a temporary collapse of large scale trade networks. But why enclosures, namely the ditched enclosures, were built no more? For that we must have a cultural answer: the social reasons that were behind their appearance and development (and that were related to the Neolithic cosmologies and to the ways they embodied the social life – Valera, 2012b) were no longer there in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. Immanent social developments and external environmental causes may be combined to explain the abrupt changes and the outcome observable at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, but the relative weight of each element is difficult to evaluate at the moment.
There is also the question of the divergent trajectories presented by some walls enclosure in the Center and North Portugal, namely Zambujal, Castanheiro do Vento and Castelo Velho, where these sites remain occupied and wall construction continues. It is not clear, however, if this traduces in fact continuity or if the occupations present different characteristics and are in some way integrated in new forms of territorial organization. In fact, these continuities are the exception, not the rule and like in the South, changes in several dimensions of the social organization can be appreciated by the beginning of the 2nd millennium: the abandonment of the practice of collective burials, the end of the production of iconographic materials, the decay of large scale trade networks, a profound transformation of the ceramic equipment and an increase of the production of metal weaponry frequently associated to individual status is also documented, especially in Estremadura. So it is not totally clear if the continuity of the occupation with building activity in some walled enclosures is traducing different regional socio-economic trajectories or just local and punctual peculiarities of a more general trend of social change.
In spite of the significant developments of the last decades in the research of social complexity in the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic of western Iberia, there is still missing important and consistent information about what happened in the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC and about the nature of the break of the previous social trajectories. Answers, therefore, have been relaying essentially in the logical formats of theoretical models, frequently with weak empirical support. Interdisciplinary research specifically orientated to this problem is needed, namely to obtain well dated and characterized site occupations of the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC, to appraise the population of the period in demographic terms and to adequately evaluate and measure climate trends, before we can more confidently talk about this process of social change."
Monday, November 23, 2015
0316 - New paper on portuguese enclosures.
It has been recently published and is available at Academia.edu and Reserach Gate.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
0276 - Published
Contents
The times and timings
of enclosures
Alasdair Whittle
Enclosures &burial
in Middle &Late Neolithic Britain
Alex Gibson
The place of human
remains anf Funerary practices in Recent Neolithic ditched and
walled enclosures in
the West of France (IV-III Mill. BC)Audrey Blanchard, Jean-Noël Guyodo, Ludovic Soler
Funerary practices and
body manipulation at Neolithic and Chalcolithic Perdigões ditched
enclosures (South Portugal)António Carlos Valera, Ana Maria Silva, Claudia Cunha, Lucy Shaw Evangelista
Skeletons in the
ditch: funerary activity in ditched enclosures of Porto Torrão (Ferreira do
Alentejo, Beja)Filipa Rodrigues
Enclosures and
funerary practices: about an archaeology in search for the symbolic
dimension of social relations.Susana Oliveira Jorge
Human Bones from
Chalcolithic Walled Enclosures of Portuguese Estremadura:
The Examples of
Zambujal and LeceiaMichael Kunst, João Luís Cardoso, Anna Waterman
Human sacrifices with
cannibalistic practices in a pit enclosure? The extraordinary early
Neolithic site of
Herxheim (Palatinate, Germany)Andrea Zeeb-Lanz
Gendered burials at an
henge-like enclosure near Magdeburg, central Germany: a tale of
revenge and ritual
killing?André Spatzier Marcus Stecher, Kurt W. Alt. François Bertemes
The Copper age ditched
settlement at Conelle de Arcevia (Central Italy)
Alberto Cazzella,
Giulia Recchia
Funerary practices in
the ditched enclosures of Camino de las Yeseras: Ritual, Temporal
and Spatial DiversityPatrícia Rios, Corina Liesau, Concepción Blasco
Recent Prehistory enclosures & funerary practices
José Enrique Márquez Romero, Vítor Jímenez JaímezWednesday, October 29, 2014
0271 - Bela Vista 5 monography
It is edited the nº2 of ERA MONOGRÁFICA dedicated to the cerimonial enclosure of Bela Vista 5 (Beja, South Portugal).
Free download here
Friday, September 19, 2014
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