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. 

0238 – Perdigões NE gate

Gate SE. Excavation are revealing that gate NE has the same general plan.

As a result of the Málaga team collaboration in the Research Program at Perdigões we have now some more information about the architectures of the NE gate (Márquez Romero et al. 2013). In relation to the semi-circular trenches that develops in front of the gates of the outside ditch (ditch 1), gate NE showed that there are two associated features, one deeper corresponding to a ditch and another one smaller corresponding to a probable palisade infrastructure. This architectonic element conditioned the circulation through the gate, forcing it to lateral paths.

 Image of the double feature in gate NE (Márquez Romero et al, 2013) 

And a simplified reconstitution of the possible palisade/ditch.

Now we are waiting for the radiocarbon dates to see if this feature was built at the same time as ditch one (and was there since the beginning of the gate) or if it was a later addition. The research there has been showing that there is a quite complex sequence of architectonic remodeling in this gate.

MÁRQUEZ-ROMERO, J.H.; SUÁREZ PADILLA, J.; MATA VIVAR, E.; JÍMENEZ-JÁIMEZ; CARO, J. L.; CUEVAS ALBADALEJO, P. (2013) – Actuaciones aqrueológicas realizadas por la Universidad de Málaga en el yacimiento de Perdigões (Reguengos de Monsaraz, Portugal): trienio 2011-2013. Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património. NIA-ERA. N.º 9 (2013). p. 61-76

0230 – “Drawing” ditched enclosures

The idea has been suggested earlier by others, but was stressed again recently by Coimbra (2013): some concentric circles present in rock art may represent the depiction of enclosures. In this case, the rock 132 from Fratel (middle Tagus river, central Portugal) really resembles a ditched enclosure with a gate with its “crab pincers”, reminding Perdigões outer gates, Xancra or many others from France.

(image taken from F. Coimbra, 2013, Ruptejo. Arqueologia rupestre da bacia do Tejo)

Gate 2 of Perdigões

Enclosure of Chez-Reine (France)

As I put it recently, a same general idea can be expressed in an architectonic design, in a decoration of a pot, in pattern of a textile, in a motive of an art composition. Does this particular association of the motive on rock 132 to an enclosure depiction makes sense? Why not?

0229 – A glimpse into Montoito

The results of Montoito geophysics are very good and confirm entirely the presence of a ditched enclosure. Well, in fact they are at least three enclosures. The inside is a wavy one, surrounded by two concentric ones. For the moment, here is a glimpse of one gate in the southeast side of the outer ditch (smiling).

A gate that reminds the gates of the outside ditch of Perdigões and the inner gates of Xancra (see here).

The geophysics are from Helmut Becker, done in the context of the NIA-Era project on ditched enclosures plans and orientations directed by me (and with the participation of Tiago do Pereiro, that detected this enclosure in Google Earth).

0188 - The importance of gates

Gates (or doors) are extraordinary important in any architecture or space organization. Being a building (with gates or doors), being a landscape (with its locals of passage that tradition preserved as “Portelas”, a Latin word, or “Alvalade”, an Arab one). They are that specific point where people cross borders between different meaningful scenarios, places of transition, elements of orientation for pathways and mental reference in construction of space, places to be defended or to be decorated or monumentalized. They are so in the present and they were so in the past. 

To ditched enclosures gates are a special issue, for they can provide us with important information about the ideological background that informed the construction of these sites. Namely, the gates show, in several cases, in Portugal as in Europe, that these enclosures were built with astronomic specific orientations, where gates played an important role: they are facing important astronomic events, like the solstices or equinoxes.

We do not have in Portugal many enclosures where we have information about the gates. We have that information for Perdigões, for the sites of the project of geophysics that I developed in the context of my NIA-ERA activity, for Santa Vitória, Outeiro Alto 2 and for a section of Alcalar. I presented some of the architecture of those gates in an earlier post, where the above image was posted.

Recintos de Bela Vista 5

Recently, in Senhora da Alegria was excavated another strange gate (posted here) and after, in Bela Vista 5, three new gates could be recorded. And although this is a latter enclosure, built in the last quarter of the 3rd millennium, it seems to use gates in a way that we can track to earlier moments in Chalcolithic: one is orientated to the sunset in the equinoxes, and the two others are orientated to Summer solstice. And one has a semicircular development by the outside (the “pinças de carangueijo”) similar to several solutions we can observe in Perdigões, Moreiros 2 or Xancra, but at the same time different: coming out of the ditch before the entrance interruption, it stops exactly where the gate begins, not blocking a front entrance or visibility and does not create a lateral entrance as it happens in the other quoted examples.

It’s a clear example that these outside elements of gates respond to intentions that are not easy to understand in their specific motivations. 

0156 – “Decorated” Gate at Castro de Santiago

At Castro de Santiago (Valera, 1997, 2007) two walled enclosures were built using pre existent granitic rocks on a hill top.

Each enclosure had a gate, built with lateral vertical granitic slabs and a horizontal threshold in the middle of the entrance. In the gate of the inner enclosure, the threshold slab presents a sequence of nine carved cup marks. Five of them form a circle, three make an curve over the circle and one is isolated.

Quite frequent in the south, these engraving are less common in the region of central Portugal hinterland. They cover a wide chronology and there are several interpretative proposals for their meaning. They are highly speculative, but in general they assume a symbolic role for these cup marks. In the present case, their location in a gate doorstep is particularly relevant, since gates always tend to have a symbolic status related to its role of connecting different significant spaces, of transition between the inside and the outside and their specific meanings. Would these marks helped to create a change of state in who passed through that gate? Would they protect the gate? Would they give some sort of warning? Would they represent something real (for instance a constellation of stars) or just an idea or superstition? And why were they carved in the inner gate and not in the outside one (that is quite similar and also have a doorstep slab)? And why in this specific enclosure? 

0142 – The strange entrance

At the Senhora da Alegria, two small ditches define a gate. They probably date from middle Neolithic and document one of the earlier contexts with ditches in Portuguese Prehistory. Not the earliest, because in the previous occupation of Early Neolithic of the same site another small ditch was identified.

But if they are not the earliest at least have the most strange and interesting gate structure ever.

The structure in front the gate of one of the ditch structures of Senhora da Alegria.

0005 - Door designs in ditched enclosures

The ditched enclosures present a significant variety of entrances, from simples ones (corresponding to a simple interruption of the ditch) to more complex ones, that can correlate ditches with wood structures.

In the wavy ditches, the extremity of the ditch can be turning inside (like Santa Vitória (7) or Xancra (2)) or outside (as in Outeiro Alto 2 (8)), depending if it was used the inside or outside curvature to make the interruption of the ditch.

Sometimes, though, the interruption is lateral in the curvature, as in Moreiros (4 and 6). In this way the entrance is not open in a straight line, but implies an also sinuous path to walk through.
This same conditioning can also be obtain by adding a semicircular small ditch or palisade in front of the entrance, like some of the doors at Perdigões (1) or Xancra (3). At Perdigões, this kind of entrance is also monumentalized by two large negative structures, defining a second, but interrupted, semicircular ditch.

These different, but at the same time quite alike, ways of designing the doors of the enclosures have some similar parallels in Europe, showing there are shared ideas relating the building of enclosures, although we can observe regional particularities.