0397 - Mobility at Perdigões

Tomorrow at the Archaeological National Museum at 11.20. The last results (while waiting for the next ones) of the project on mobility of humans and animals at Perdigões enclosures..

0053 – Escoural walled enclosure and the Neolithic-Chalcolithic transition

Rock 6 and Chalcolithic tower above it (after Gomes, 1991)

Location: Montemor-o-Novo municipality, Évora district, Alentejo, South Portugal)
Chronology: Chalcolithic
Bibliographic references: Gomes, 1991.

The excavations in the walled enclosure of Escoural, located over the formation where the famous cave with Paleolithic art and Late Neolithic funerary use is, detected a wall and a tower and two phases of occupation dated from the first half of the 3rd millennium BC.

The interesting thing is that the wall and the tower were built over carved rocks with Late Neolithic “bucrânios” (representation of ox heads and horns) and a (debated) representation of a wheel car. This was considered a sanctuary and the construction of the walled enclosure was seen as a deliberated act of destruction of the previous site and of its meaning and social role. As the author puts it, the situation represents “a confrontation of two socio economic and religious conceptions”, or in another words, a confrontation between semi-nomad shepherds and sedentary farmers.

At the time, ditched enclosures were practically unknown, and for Late Neolithic no “heavy” architectures were known besides the megalithic ones. So, walled enclosures were seen as an indicator of a new social system, based on agriculture. For some, it would have its origins in internal social dynamics, for others it would have been a result of diffusion. In both conceptions, the transition from Late Neolithic to Chalcolithic was seen as an important historical milestone of periodization, a frontier between two different social systems and historical periods.

Escoural walled enclosure was used as an evidence for this perspective.

Today, we know of large architectonic investments in building ditched enclosures in the Late Neolithic (Porto Torrão, Perdigões, Juromenha 1, Ficalho, Torrão, Águas Frias, Malhada das Mimosas, Ponte da Azambuja). More than that, some of those enclosures grow bigger and continued throughout the chalcolithic, during the 3rd millennium, and became large ditched enclosures (Perdigões or Porto Torrão). Some are related to megalithic cromlechs and to funerary practices and present symbolic items that, in the overall picture, clearly reveal continuity and not rupture.

On the contrary, this can be seen in all subsystems. And as to the world views, the recent research of the symbolic foundations of some ditched enclosures suggests that the same general Neolithic cosmological system is framing chaolcolithic communities. In other words, Chalcolithic (at least untill the middle of the 3rd millennium) is the real Late Neolithic.

0031 - Models and enclosures (1)

Walled enclosure of Zambujal (image from here). One of the classic sites in the debate of walled enclosures in Portugal.

During the seventies of the XX century, Carlos Tavares da Silva and Joaquina Soares undertook an approach that was based on localism and on a materialistic theoretical background. The emergence of Chalcolithic societies in South Portugal was seen as the consequence of labor development and production intensification, framed by a Secondary Product Revolution dynamic. This social-economic development would support segmented political structures, characterized by autonomic communities, basically equalitarian, organized at a local scale. Localism was seen as a reinforcement of social relations based on sedentary residence and in territorial contraction, generating a social, economic and political autonomous environment, according to the model of “one site / one fortification / one territory / one community”. Autarchy and competition for strategic resources would have generated a condition of “global war”, responsible for the fortification of settlements present for the first time in the archaeological record. War would export conflict and tension to inter-community relationships and preserve the internal unit of the group on an equalitarian basis. Finally, equalitarianism and political autarchy were seen as reaction to a centralist and hierarchic process, allegedly emerging in the late Neolithic. This was the theoretical background to explain the Chalcolithic walled enclosures.

Theoretical disputes apart, this model suffered from problems of scale and data. At the time, few Neolithic and Chalcolithic enclosures were known and fewer were excavated in Alentejo. It was pioneering times. Discourse was built on a reduced number of isolated sites, scarcely excavated in the majority, and quite distant from each other, extracted from their unknown settlement networks context and landscapes. A more realistic density and diversity of territorial occupation was yet to be disclosed, and the situation was propitious to localism and to interpretation centered on the site regardless its context: the site was the scale of analysis and then, by a generalization process, discourse was extending to a regional scale (Southwest Iberia). A uniform pattern of chacolithic settlements location was establish: high places, with good visual control of landscape and fine natural defense conditions.

Naturally, today this picture is no longer empirically sustainable and is also questionable theoretically. But, at the time, it was the first attempt to introduce historical materialism in the Portuguese Recent Prehistory. And, in the context of an Archaeology dominated by Cultural Historical perspectives, based on diffusion as the major mechanism to explain social change, that regarded the walled enclosures (first) as colonies and (after) as trading posts, this materialistic approach became quite refreshing at theoretical level in those days.

References:
Silva, C.T. e Soares, J. (1976-77), "Contribuição para o conhecimento dos povoados calcolíticos do Baixo Alentejo e Algarve", Setúbal Arqueológica, II-III, Setúbal, MAEDS, p.179-272.
Valera, A.C. 2009, “Cosmological bonds and settlement aggregation processes during Late Neolithic and Copper Age in South Portugal.”, Thurston, Tina L. and Salisbury, Roderick B.(eds). 2009. Reimagining Regional Analyses: The Archaeology of Spatial and Social. Dynamics. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

0026 - Going public on large enclosures

It is not from Portugal (is from Jaén, Spain), but reveals one of the views develop for the Iberian large enclosures (called “macro villages”). This kind of interpretation is also assumed for Alcalar, Porto Torrão or Perdigões by some theoretical backgrounds, namely based on functionalism and historical materialism. In the last years, strong criticism has been developed, but it has not been ease to promote debate. Maybe is because of that the different approaches and the different discourses are rarely presented to the public and monolithic interpretation prevails.

0015 - Modular architectures ?

Has been recently suggested (Diaz-del-Rio, 2008) that some structures of Iberian chalcolithic walled enclosures may have a construction organized by modules. It is argued that the main walls (and not just re-buildings or re-enforcements) might have been built in sequences in time and not in short and continuous periods (building at once; building phase). Each module would be a specific project of a specific part of the community and related to the capacity of work and resources mobilization present at each time. The final building would be an aggregation of segmented projects, expressing the social organization of the community itself. As Iberian examples that suggest this sort of modular building Los Millares (south Spain) and Castanheiro do Vento (north Portugal) were presented .


(in Diáz-del-Rio, 2008, adapted)

In fact, this kind of situation has been also observed in ditched enclosures. In Germany, at Herxheim, the final image of a ditch seems to be the result of a sequence of elongated and overlapping pits. The same was reported to the Portuguese enclosure of Salgada, where the ditch was built in sections (see here).

In recent papers on sinuous ditches (Valera, in print) and on the Xancra’s geophysics (Valera & Becker, 2011), I analysed the image of Xancra and question if the same situation is not present, since similar modules (to the ones proposed to Castanehiro do Vento and Los Millares walls) are apparently suggested by the image.


(in Valera & Becker, 2011)

Naturally, this is not just a matter of building strategies. It has strong implications in the theoretical models we generate to these communities. If huge architectonic structures are built in smaller segments through time, requiring less labour mobilization and control, less logistics, they became accessible to smaller segmentary communities of parental bases, that don´t have a developed and strong social hierarchy. If so, we must carefully question how large constructions are, in fact, built and assume that heavy architecture can no longer be use uncritically as undisputed evidence of a highly social and political complexity.

On the other hand, it draws attention to the problem that many constructions are a result of a long process of construction and use, and that there is not an evident gap in time between the “building phase” and the “using phase”: architectures as living processes of construction.

Bibliography
DIÁZ-DEL-RIO, Pedro (2008), “El context social de las agregaciones de población durante el Calcolítico Peninsular”, ERA Arqueologia, 8, Lisboa, Era-Arqueologia / Colibri, p.128-137.
ORSCHIEDT, Jörg e HAIDLE, Miriam Noël (2006), “The LBK enclosure of Herxheim. Theatre of war or ritual centre? References from osteoarchaeological investigations”, Journal of Conflict Archaeology, 2, p.153-167.
VALERA, A.C. e BECKER, H. (2011), “Cosmologia e recintos de fossos da Pré-História Recente: resultados da prospecção geofísica em Xancra (Cuba, Beja)”, Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património, 7, Lisboa, NIA-ERA Arqueologia, p.23-32.
VALERA, António Carlos (in print), “Fossos sinuosos na Pré-História Recente do Sul de Portugal: ensaio de análise crítica”, Actas do V Encontro de Arqueologia do SW Peninsular.