0371 - Workshop on Prehistoric deposition and fragmentation practices

Depositions and fragmentation, as intentional and meaningful social practices, are common in many European prehistoric enclosures. The same happens in Iberian ones, although not always perceived, conceptualized, and questioned as so.

To encourage the debate and research of such subjects in Portuguese archaeology the following workshop was organized and will take place in Lisbon, in 14 October. We have chosen a small auditorium of a public book store to do this. We also want to encourage the public interest.

0354 - Meeting Enclosing Worlds

In 12 days will start the international meeting Enclosing Worlds, that will take place in Reguengos de Monsaraz, Évora, Portugal. The program can be seen here: http://enclosingworlds.blogspot.pt/p/program.html (registration to assist in the same site).

For the first time in Portugal we are putting in confrontation historical trajectories from different continents where enclosure building had relevant social roles. It is an exercise of compared Archaeology to discuss social processes and enlarge horizons in the approach to this complex and fascinating expression of the humane: architecture as space organizer, as expression of cosmologies and as social synthesis.

An organization of Era Arqueologia S.A., ICArEHB centre and Municipality of Reguengos de Monsaraz (with the support of Esporão, FCT, DRCALEN, Municipality of Redondo) and with the enthusiasm of Perdigões project.

0348 - Enclosing Worlds Programme

The programme for oral presentations at the meeting Enclosing Worlds (to be held in Reguengos de Monsaraz, Portugal, 12-14 October 2016) is now available here.

Lower registration fees to attend until 31 July (here).

0344 - Beakers and enclosures

In the next 12 and 13 of May, in a Iberian meeting taking place at the Faculdade de Letras of Lisbon University, I will be talking about beakers and their social roles in two different enclosures: Fraga da Pena in Central/North Portugal and Perdigões in the South. A walled enclosure and a ditched one. 

Some International beakers from Perdigões enclosures

Nailed impressed Beakers from Fraga da Pena walled enclosure.

There are many differences between these two contexts and between their “beaker expressions”. But there are also some similarities: the ways the characteristics of both sites are intrinsically related to the social roles that beakers seem to have been performing there. Two good examples of a contextualism sound bite: that objects and contexts are meaningfully bonded.  Discussing beakers as an entity regardless their contextual specificities is a possible approach at a large scale of analysis, but it would hardly enlighten on the diverse ways they were historically active and regionalized.

0341 - Brasilian (Proto) Jê enclosures come to Enclosing Worlds

(Image taken from http://jelandscapes.exeter.ac.uk/regions/highlands/campo-belo-do-sul/)

The brasilian Jê enclosures will be present at the meeeting Enclosing Worlds, where the enclosing phenomena will be discussed by confronting different historical situations and trajectories from different parts of the world. You may see the abstracts as they are being progressivelly dislayed at http://enclosingworlds.blogspot.pt/p/abstracts.html.

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…

0331 - Meeting about enclosures and methods

In the sequence of the research developed about the subject in NIA-ERA, I'll be participating in a workshop at Oporto University (next March 17th) dedicated to debate the relations between the research of enclosures and methodological options and approaches. Here is the program (in Portuguese):

Recintos peninsulares da Pré-História Recente. Métodos multidisciplinares de investigação.

0327 - Abstracts for the meeting Enclosing Worlds

 

The preparation of the meeting Enclosing Worlds is going on. Paper proposals are being received and analysed. Abstracts will be progressively displayed in the web page during the next months.
You may check the abstracts here.

0304 - Enclosing worlds 2016 conference

 

ENCLOSING WORLDS

Comparative approaches to enclosure phenomena

 12 – 14 OCTOBER, 2016, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal

 

CONFERENCE PROPOSAL – 1^st announcement

 Analogy was always central to archaeological methods and interpretations. It is a powerful tool that has been consecutively criticized and theorized, remaining at the heart of the archaeological practice. Between the large amplitude of the uses of analogy in Archaeology, the cross-culture comparative methods have been shown to be useful to deal with cultural change and the correlations between materiality, human behavior and social organization.

This conference intends to focus on the emergence and development of the European prehistoric enclosures phenomena in the context of a large scale social practice of enclosing expressed by architectures, landscapes and forms of territorial management. It is meant to confront the diversity of the European phenomena between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age with other historical processes of enclosure building developed in other continents and to discuss the social implications and the social roles of such architectures and strategies of space organization.

With this purpose, the conference will reunite case studies from Western and Eastern Europe, Central and Southern Africa and North and South America, stimulating the development of comparative research on this topic and the debate on comparative methodologies, namely regarding the definition of comparable controlled units.

The organization of the meeting will be the responsibility of a partnership between the research group for the Development of Complex Societies of the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behavior (ICArEHB - University of Algarve), the archaeological research department of ERA Arqueologia (NIA-ERA) and the Global Research Program of Perdigões enclosure.

Call for papers is opened until 31 March 2016.

 

Inscriptions for assistance will be open in October 2015.

Contacts: António Carlos Valera (antoniovalera@era-arqueologia.pt)

 

 

 

0302 - The possible enclosure of Mercador

Excavated in the beginning of this century, Mercador (Mourão, Évora) revealed a segment of a stone feature that seems to correspond to the base of a wall that would define and enclosure with a diameter estimated in 14m.

Plan of the segment of the stone structure with estimation of diameter (Valera, 2013)

 

 

The site, dated from Chalcolithic, had a posterior occupation during the middle ages that was responsible for the dismounting of some of the previous structures.

Projection of the possible enclosure (Valera, 2013)

The eventual enclosure corresponded to the second phase of the occupation of the site and was located in the extremity of a plane top of a smooth rise, facing the valley of the Guadiana river. Outside two circular stone houses connected by a small wall were recorded. The chronology for this phase is from the second half of the 3^rd millennium BC, roughly contemporaneous of the second phase of the Porto das Carretas (just 1,5 km away), where there are similar constructions of stone houses (interpreted as towers by the excavators) associated to bell beaker pottery.

Plan of the stone houses (Valera, 2013).

 

 

Bibliographic References:

 

Valera, A.C. (2013), As comunidades agropastoris na margem esquerda do Guadiana. 2ª metade do IV aos inícios do II milénio AC., Memórias d' Odiana, 2ª Série, 6, Edia.

 

0288 - Visiting Fraga da Pena

A group of german archaeologists and students of Archaeology (headed by Michael Kunst and guided by me) visiting the Fraga da Pena walled enclosure in 2008.

Some took some risks to photograph a painting preserved in one of the rocks of the granitic tor.

0278 - The importance of building.

One of the theories about the social role of enclosures, namely ditched enclosures, is the importance of the building process. Since Evens that the focus on the importance of building itself became a matter of discussion regarding the interpretation of the social role of enclosures. The general idea was that the main social role of the project was performed during the building process, rather than after. Some criticizing of this centered perspective in the building process has been done (for instance Whittle in a recent paper), but the criticism is more about the “centered” than about the “perspective”. In fact, the focus on the building process of enclosures, ditched or walled, is something to be taken into consideration in the understanding of their social role. Let me give you a contemporary example to explain this point.

You are all familiar with the Amish communities in America. And some of you are familiar with their traditions. Some of them have been displayed by the cinema or by television programs. They tend to show the importance of community work. One example is that presented by the Hollywood film (I think is called The Witness) with Harrison Ford. There is a couple that marries and the community joins up to build them a barn. 

When the barn was being build, all the community was there, working together, reinforcing there social bonds and identity, performing their traditions, communicating and perpetuating their world views. It was a social event of structural importance for the community as a whole; after being built, the barn was useful only to the married couple. So, the building process was socially and ideologically meaningful for the community and once the structure was finished it was only economically meaningful for a specific family.  This exemplifies, I think, the social importance of building.

The building processes are essential to understand the social role of enclosures. However, that doesn’t mean that we have to imagine, as for our example of the Amish barn, that we have a first construction phase of communal interest followed by a use phase of restricted interest. The long temporalities of some ditched enclosures and the evidences of continued constructions (new ditches, recutting of ditch filling, sometimes during long chronologies, like in Perdigões) show that there is not an easy separation between a period of building and a period of use.

The merit of this approach to building processes is precisely that: building is already using in social and symbolic terms. In fact, the social, ideological, economic role of building stars in the moment of its idealization and design and continues during building/using phases. A perspective that have been absent from the traditional theoretical approaches to enclosures in Portugal (and in Iberia).

0275 - Back to V.N. de São Pedro

Today I was in a conference where a new project on the mythical Portuguese site of Vila Nova de São Pedro (VNSP) was presented. As known, VNSP is a walled enclosure that, with Los Millares, gave name to an archaeological culture in the times of archaeological cultures.

The project, to be developed by the Portuguese Archaeologists Association, was presented today and aims to revalue the site in scientific terms and promote its public assessment.

One interesting aspect of the project is that it seems to incorporate some of the new theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches that have been responsible for a revolution in South Portugal regarding the enclosures phenomena.

In my own words, I would say that this was urgently needed in the approaches to enclosures in Portuguese Estremadura. Based in the new data and new theoretical approaches that have been developed in south Portugal, new insights may be developed regarding walled enclosures in the region and in the re-reading of old texts about old excavations.

In this path, it seems that, in old reports, descriptions of previous ditches to the walled architectures, possibly opened to be rapidly filled with symbolic depositions, are now “emerging” due to the new awareness. The possibility of ditched structures previous to stone walls in VNSP is now on the table, just by reading old texts with “new eyes”.

The approach to Estremadura walled enclosures was needing a refreshment in the scientific enquiries. That was obvious for some time now. So I sincerely hope that this new project develops the adequate inquiry, builds a solid theoretical background and manage to obtain the adequate resources to bring VNSP back to the stage, to actually contribute to the debate on the passionate phenomena of recent prehistory enclosures.

0267 – Towers and huts

Late central towers at Porto das Carretas (left); stone huts at Mercador (up right); late central stone hut at Monte do Tosco 1 (down right). See how dimensions are quite similar.

            There are some Portuguese walled enclosures that, according to their excavators, present central towers in the latest phases when the wall are no longer functioning and enclosing. That is the case of Monte da Tumba, S. Pedro or Porto das Carretas. In general, these structures just present some rows of stones, are circular and tend to date from the Late Chalcolithic (some associated to Bell Beaker).

            However, it is never clearly explained why they are interpreted as towers. In fact, similar structures, with the same width and high and with identical diameters, are interpreted as huts. That is the case of the two huts of Mercador. They have the same dimensions of the so called towers of Porto das Carretas, they are from the same general period as the later, they dist just 1,5kms and they even are united by a short wall like the structures at Porto das Carretas. So structurally, how can we distinguish the base of a stone hut from the base of a stone tower, when we do not have enough information to estimate the vertical development of the structure?

            The larger hut at Mercador has a central post hole. But a two floors tower would probably have one also. And not all structures considered huts present internal post holes. At Mercador or Monte do Tosco, huts present internal fire places and areas of storage. But couldn’t towers present them also. During the Late Chalcolithic, what could be inside a hut that couldn´t be inside a tower? So, internal context also doesn’t help much in establishing a difference.

            So, in what bases do we call towers to the late central structures in Porto das Carretas, S. Pedro or Monte da Tumba? Or are they really stone huts, associated to late occupations of these sites? We need criteria and solid evidence to name these structures.

0266 - Coming soon

0265 – The ephemeral history of walled enclosures

Plans of S. Pedro (Mataloto, 2010) and Porto das Carretas (Soares e Silva, 2010). References in the page of W.E. Bibliography.

I recently defended (Valera, 2014) that during the second half of the 3rd millennium BC walled enclosures are no longer built in Alentejo. Some may still be in use during the third quarter, others are abandoned, others present bell beaker reoccupations, but there is no record of the building of new wall enclosures.

According the actual available data, in the long duration of the building of enclosures and monumental architectures in South Portugal, the construction of walled enclosures are a late adding (first centuries of the 3rd millennium) and seem to have a relatively ephemeral life, with the activity of building walls ending by the middle of the millennium.

References:

Valera, A.C. (2014), “Continuidades e descontinuidades entre o 3º e a primeira metade do 2º milénio a.n.e. no Sul de Portugal: alguns apontamentos em tempos de acelerada mudança.”, Antrope, 1, Tomar, IPT, p. 298-316.

0263 - Portuguese enclosures in world congress

After the session organized by NIA-ERA in 2006 in the UISPP congress in Lisbon, where the “Idea of Enclosure” was debated, after the international congress held at Gulbenkian (Lisbon) in 2012, organized again by NIA-ERA and dedicated to discuss the relations between enclosures and funerary practices, Portuguese ditched and wall enclosures are again in a international stage: they will be presented and debated tomorrow in the UISPP congress, held in Burgos, Spain.

The following sessions are to be highlighted:

A25d - Monumentality and territory: relationship between enclosures and necropolis in the European Neolithic.

B44 - Within ditches and walls. Settlements, fortifications, enclosures, monuments, villages

and farms in the third Millennium BCE.

0256 - The origin of walled enclosures in Alentejo

Radiocarbon dates for walled enclosures in Alentejo

For some time the origin of walled enclosures in Alentejo was thought to have occurred in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. The radiocarbon dates from two sites seem to indicate so: the chronologies from Monte da Tumba (Silva e Sores, 1987) and São Brás (Parreira, 1983).

These old dates, thought, were obtained over charcoal and they have a large standard deviation and in face of another set of dates, some of them more recent and obtained over bone, the actual image on the issue has changed.

The dates from Escoural (Gomes, 1991) walled enclosure, from Monte Novo dos Albardeiros (Gonçalves, 1988/89) and more recently from São Pedro (Mataloto, 2010) and  Porto das Carretas (Soares e Silva, 2010) indicate that these architectures emerge in the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, namely after 2900 BC. This is coincident with the limit that radiocarbon establishes between Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic contexts in ditched enclosures (Valera, 2013a). Furthermore, the chronology available for the Late Neolithic hypogea of Sobreira de Cima (Valera, 2013b) and for the funerary context of Gruta do Escoural (Araújo e Lejeune, 1995), clearly in the second half of the 4th, corroborates this argument. In fact, it is not credible that these funerary contexts, with their unquestionable Neolithic assemblages, could be contemporaneous of early Chalcolithic walled enclosures, with a completely different material assemblage and just a few miles away.

The old dates should be abandoned in the debate of the origin of the walled enclosures in Alentejo. They clearly are a phenomena of the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. And an ephemeral one, since the majority of the dated ones seem to end around the middle of the millennium (the recent dates of Porto das Carretas correspond to a phase where the enclosure was already deactivated and the one from M.N. dos Albardeiros from a possible reutilization). Several are reoccupied in Beaker times, but not as enclosures, like Porto das Carretas or Mnte do Tosco (Valera, 2000).

In the long time span of ditched enclosures, walled enclosures could have been just a temporary adding to the architectures of the societies that lived in the region.

This is an argument that I am developing in a paper that is almost ready.

0224 - Updating map of enclosures

Has just been updated at the map page.

0198 – The complexity of enclosing

Around here Prehistoric enclosing is sometimes considered an easy issue. Maybe because it is approached as a Prehistoric matter of obvious and literal meaning. However, not just prehistoric issues aren't easy and obvious, but also enclosing is a complex sociological attitude.

Enclosing is a decision that can respond to many different social and psychological reasons. Therefore, Sociology and Social Psychology cam help archaeology (if archaeologists let them).

A good example of this is the work of Tim Insoll (professor of the University of Manchester), that has been studying shrine contexts in Africa. I attend to one of his talks in Oxford and it became clear to me that there is a lot of matter in this kind of work that can be useful for the research of Prehistoric enclosures (maybe that is why he was invited to talk in a meeting dedicated to Prehistoric enclosures).

The shrine is a sort of memorial, monument or grave structure that encloses something, being to protect or conceal what is inside or to protect what is outside (from what is inside). In his studies in Africa, Insoll deal with a lot of different forms of enclosing: material ones, symbolic ones; evident or just suggested; completely involving the object or space, or just demark it. Sometimes those shines were made to protect what was inside, sometimes it was precisely the opposite.

 

 

An example of a modern shrine: the statue of the Portuguese physician Sousa Martins that lived in the second half of the XIX century (located in Campo dos Mártires da Pátria, Lisbon). By his work he was venerated by his patients and it became a legend and a saint for the public, that until the present pray for his intervention in times of need of medical assistance. The statue is now a shrine, involved by hundreds of plaques that thank his “miracles”. The plaques involve him, protect and generate a internal space of holiness.

Those examples tell us that we need to have a solid theoretical background about the phenomena of enclosing to approach enclosures, since the issue is not an easy one. Enclosing is a sociological and psychological problem. It is an attempt to control and conform, not the world, but the world as it is expressed by some ideas. They are built to prevent, to protect, to differentiate, to separate, to hierarchize, to impose pathways, to impose visibilities, to represent ideologies, to spatially materialize social and political structures, to communicate.  The reasons for enclosing may be quite diversified and may respond to several different motivations.

There is a lot to learn in the social and psychological phenomena of shrining that can be helpful to researches that deal with prehistoric enclosures.

 

 

Detail of the shrine of plaques in Sousa Martins statue.