0091 – Maps and their meaning

Everything means something; usually more than just one thing. Archaeological maps are no different.

The first map presents a distribution of enclosures in Europe. That map has been published several times by several authors for a long period of time. In that map Iberia is almost a desert and that has at least two readings.

Both are expressed by the second map. Iberia has also a lot of enclosures, not just walled, but also ditched. This is a result of recent work that is demonstrating that Iberia is participating of the structural trends of Recent Prehistoric Europe (I wonder why is there some surprise). But what these maps also show is the low level of internationalization of Portuguese archaeology. If there isn’t a significant effort of European researchers to get acquaintance whit Portuguese archaeology (and language doesn’t explain it all), it is also true that Portuguese archaeology has lower levels of internationalization (and language is still not an excuse). New data is available for some time now and it is not reflect in recent international publications.

So what do those maps really express? The desert on Portugal ravels, in a way, the recent nature of the developments of Portuguese Archaeology (the recent discovery of several ditched and walled enclosures) but also reflects its traditional poor conditions for international relationships and circulation of information.    

So those distribution maps need a careful hermeneutic approach. As usually happens whit any kind of statement.  

0090 - International meeting

Registration file here

0089 – Timber

Parts of the magnetograms obtained by Helmut Becker for Perdigões and Moreiros 2, showing alignments of post holes from possible palisades and (in the case of Moreiros) of a timber circular structure.

This is a material that has been underestimated in the Iberian archaeology of Prehistoric architecture. The reason is certainly related to the poor preservation of timber evidences, but also to axiomatic postures. We are too much preset to stone building and to forget wood.

The recent projects on the geophysics of ditched enclosures (at Perdigões by Málaga University and NIA-ERA, and in several others sites by NIA-ERA in a project directed by me, all having Helmut Becker as geophysicist) has suggested other ways: wood must have been much more important in building positive structures. There is even a possible wood circle in Serpa area (in print), that might bring to Iberia a type of Neolithic constructions not yet documented.

But the main problem is that Portuguese archaeologists (or should I say Iberian archaeologists) are not trained to recognize the remains of wooden constructions. I mean post holes.

Ho yes, we have a lot of small post holes, of 10, 15 centimetres diameter. Those we have and the huts imagined with them. But large timber structures are missing, though geophysics shows it differently.

In fact, there are many pits in many places traditionally and axiomatically interpreted as “silos”, or reused “silos”, that don’t have (or almost don’t have) anything inside but sediments and some stones. But many of those pits might be large post holes, of trunk posts, like the ones shown in Helmut’s geophysical images. The problem is that the majority of archaeological interventions are spatially restricted, and what might be a sequence of post holes becomes one or one and a half “silos”.

Architectures with large timber trunks must start to be considered in Iberia. There is now enough evidence to suggest that those constructions might have had a significant importance, far more than recognize by traditional discourse.

But, naturally, with this recognition new problems arise. If we are talking of post that are tree trunks we must start asking what kind of trees we have here that might provide long strait trunks for those constructions. South Iberia, even then, was not central Europe or North Europe. Vegetation was different. So, what kind of tree could be use for large timber structures using tree trunks? A question that was not asked yet to the people that studies paleo flora.

A new inquiry is in the agenda.

0088 - Fraga da Pena and beakers

Fraga da Pena is the site where the largest number of beaker pots was recorded in central-north Portugal. But the most interesting thing is the distribution of beaker shards inside the two walled enclosures: concentration of shards from several half pots in the middle of the outside enclosure; the distribution of beaker shards along the path that leads to the inside enclosure and a deposition of a complete exemplar of the few International style beakers at the end of a stone alignment in the sequence of the gate.

The general appearance of Fraga da Pena, without evidences of inside domestic structures or contexts, already suggested a particular symbolic social role for the site and for the activities that were developed there. But the spatial distribution of the beaker remains inside reinforces that discourse.

Here we have large walls (more that 3 meters wide) that enclose very small areas where no domestic remains were detected. On the contrary, exceptional material is present and dominates the archaeological assemblages. The monumental natural tor and the relations to local landscape complete the image of a special place for special practices. Beaker pottery seems to have played also an important role in those practices.

(Image taken from Valera, 2007)

0087 - Excavating at Perdigões

0086 - Perdigões "in tour"

After Bradford and Oxford in March, Perdigões will be “touring” in April through some Portuguese universities. Conferences about the site, its global research program and other similar portuguese enclosures will be held at University of Algarve (12th), Porto (18th) and Coimbra (26th). Information about times and places will be displayed soon.

0085 - Why are they circular?

"It is not the right angle that attracts me neither the strait line, hard, inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curved line, the curve that I found in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous path of its rivers, in the waves of the sea, in a woman’s body. From curves is made the Universe – the infinite curved universe of Einstein."(Oscar Niemeyer – my translation)

"Não é o ângulo recto que me atrai nem a linha recta, dura, inflexível, criada pelo homem. O que me atrai é a curva livre e sensual, a curva que encontro nas montanhas do meu país, no curso sinuoso dos seus rios, nas ondas do mar, no corpo da mulher amada. De curvas é feito todo o universo – o universo curvo de Einstein."
(Oscar Niemeyer)

That is why I think we cannot understand these sites without an approach from the history of mentalities and cosmogonies. Because architecture materializes mind and world views.

0084 – Funerary practices in walled enclosures: the case of Leceia.

Structure with human remains at Leceia (after Cardoso, 1994:fig.40)

At the walled enclosure of Leceia, near Lisbon, some human remains were recorded inside a circular structures built with vertical slabs and rows of stones, reminding tholoi architectures.
This structure was interpreted as a garbage dump structure. Here is what the excavator said about this context (my translation):

“In Leceia we may have documented one of these conflict situations, occurred already in Middle Chalcolithic; in one structure of garbage accumulation (...) several uncompleted and scattered human remains (especially teeth) were collected mixed with domestic rubbish; the anthropological study indicated the presence of three adult individuals, males when it was possible established gender. Such results, together with the deposit conditions, related to unburied individuals, gives substance to the hypothesis that those are the remains of attackers that, after being slaughtered, didn’t deserve a grave like the ones from the settlement” (Cardoso, 1994:106).

This statement was produce before other human remains were known in other walled enclosures and, especially, before the striking evidences of funerary practices in ditched enclosures such as Perdigões and Porto Torrão.

Today this statement is questionable. Not just because of the uncritical use of the concept of garbage applied to Prehistory and for most of the so called garbage structures (Hill, 2000), but mainly because the evidences are showing that death management is much more complex during the 3rd millennium BC than we previously suspected and that the “megalithic solution” and primary depositions are just a restricted part of the rituals involved.

According to the recent evidence, characterized by a diversity of funerary practices inside enclosures that show a significant variety of body treatment and post mortem manipulations that can be addressed to ritual practices, this context needs to be reinterpreted in the light of wider empirical evidence and different theoretical backgrounds.

Hill, James D. (2000), "Can we recognise a different european past? A constrastive archaeology of Later Prehistoric Settlements in Southern England", (J. Thomas ed.) Interprettive Archaeology. A reader., London, Leicester University Press, p.431-444.

0083 - Cutting and re-cutting

Some ditches present evidences of re-cutting. When a previous and larger ditch is totally or partially filled, sometimes another smaller ditch is dug in those deposits. Usually, this is not a total reopening of the first ditch, but simple of a small part. That is the case recently detected at Senhora da Alegria, in a ditch belonging to the Late Neolithic phase.

This means that we cannot look at this reopening as a “maintenance task”, but rather as a new use (even if with similar purposes) of a previous perceived structure. And the argument of saving efforts, by excavating deposits rather than bedrock, is not always an argument. At Senhora da Alegria all ditches are excavated in deposits, being of previous occupations or of weathered sandstones. So, no big difference can be assumed in terms of work invested. So why are there, in the more than a dozen ditches already identified, situations like new ditches using part of previous similar structures?; situations that new ditches are open quite near to others without reopening them?; situations where a new smaller ditch is totally dug inside another?

The answers can be different for all situations and probably related to several dimensions of a living site: changes in space organization; changes in the occupied area; consequences of a seasonal occupation, etc. But what I want to argue is that the reopening of a previous ditch that is filled with stones and archaeological material is not just an economic strategy of those communities or an activity that brings troubles to the archaeologists (because changes and mixes older materials with recent ones): it is an intervention that is strongly conditioned by the earlier structure, in physical terms, but also in meaningful ones. It is a moment when a given community interacts with previous construction and previous materials. What would they think when they dug previous artefacts? Would they just have a “catchment attitude”? Or were those materials seen as a link to ancestors? How would a segment point or an early arrowhead be seen by a person that produces more recent bifacial and all retouched arrowheads? Or a decorated shard in a moment where all pottery was undecorated?

Digging a ditch in previous structures is different from digging a ditch in the bedrock. That is certain, but not only because of the labour involved or because of a similar space organization. It has consequences in other dimensions that are important to understand past decisions and their outcomes.

0082 - Alegria’s early contexts

At Senhora da Alegria the excavation in course steel reveals new structures from several Prehistoric periods, now apparently reaching the Late Chalcolithic or even Bronze Age (we already have a Late Bronze Age deposition of two vessels). But in a specific area, early Neolithic contexts keep appearing.

At the bottom of the stratigraphic sequence, a layer with scattered stones, fireplaces, pottery and microlithic materials revealed (in the top) an alignment of post holes (possibly from another orthogonal structure). Decorated pottery is present, including this “cardial” decorated shard.

This level is cut by a small ditch that has a structured gate facing East. This ditch is, in terms of the stratigraphic sequence, from the same phase of the sub rectangular house detected earlier.

These two moments correspond to the earliest occupations of the site that can be addressed generally to the early and transition to the middle Neolithic. But the occupation is incredibly long (even if not continuous).

0081 - Neolithic ditches and the dynamics of growth

Perdigões inside ditched has just been dated by C14, as well as some related structures (such as a small ditch of a possible palisade and a latter occupation of a hypogeum type pit).
A lower layer inside de ditch (Ditch 6) was dated from 3330-3020, the small ditch from 3340-3020 and the top of the hypogeum pit from 3090-2910 (dates calibrated and at two sigma interval – still not published). Material culture is generally the same inside these structures and is perfectly consistent with what we know about the period.

The inside enclosure of Perdigões is, therefore, contemporaneous of other Late Neolithic ditched enclosures, such as Juromenha 1(four dates between 3370-2920 – Mataloto & Boaventura, 2009) or Ficalho (with a date from 3500-3020 – Soares, 1996) or others not yet dated sites.

But one interesting question emerge from this situation: why deed Perdigões enclosures kept growing with the built of new and larger enclosures during the third millennium, reaching a 500m diameter and presenting huge negative structures, and why the other Neolithic enclosures didn´t.

My answer has to do with the symbolic role that Perdigões assumed since the beginning. A role that is not so clear in other Neolithic sites. In fact, some enclosures seem to express architectonically (their design, topographical location and landscape connections) and in terms of the ritualized practices that were present inside (namely the funerary practices) a status that may be responsible for the historical role they played and the dimensions they achieved. They are basically expressing Neolithic world views and their gigantic size (by the time standards) at the end of the 3rd millennium may very well be interpreted as the singing of the swan of Neolithic Cosmologies.

Just like in other historical dynamics, the growth of some highly symbolic and socially meaningful sites may be what conditioned the development of others. The answers for this kind of questions must be searched at a regional scale and not at a site one.

Bibliographic references:
Mataloto, R. & Boaventura, R. (2009), “Entre vivos e mortos nos IV e III milénios a.n.e. do Sul de Portugal: um balanço relativo do povoamento com base em datações pelo radiocarbono”, Revista Portuguesa de Arqueologia, nº12, 2, Lisboa, p.31-77.
Soares, A. Monge (1996), "Datação absoluta da estrutura neolítica junto à Igreja Velha de S. Jorge (Vila Verde de Ficalho, Serpa)", Vipasca, 5, Aljustrel, p.51-58.

0080 - Perdigões and funerary practices

The meeting is taking place tomorrow at the University of Coimbra. See here.

0079 - International Meeting

“Recent Prehistory Enclosures and Funerary Practices”

Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon
6 to 8 of November 2012.

The questions raised by ditched and walled enclosures have been frequently at the heart of several debates regarding Peninsular Recent Prehistory communities.

Amongst the numerous issues discussed, one has emerged with particular relevance: the direct relation between enclosures and funerary practices. These relations, in some cases, go as far as to question the very notion of necropolis as a separated space for the dead and present similar situations that have been address with different approaches, generating different answers.

Because the last years have provided, in Iberia, important information regarding these contexts and their connection with funerary practices, and because Perdigões enclosure became an anchor project in this matter, the ERA Arqueologia decided to promote an international meeting to debate this issue.

Being a European phenomenon, we understand that the approach to the peninsular data must be framed and confronted with the information available to other European regions, aiming to encourage debate at different scales and from different contexts, experiences and theoretical backgrounds. Therefore, the meeting will assemble a group of researchers with provenance in several European countries where this topic has particularly importance.

Programme and Registration File here

0078 - Ditches and palisades

This association is frequently assumed for ditched enclosures, but is rarely demonstrated. In what concerns Portuguese enclosures, we have some short notice on a possible inside palisade in Juromenha Neolithic ditched enclosure and we have the images of the inner enclosure of Perdigões (see here) and of some of the lines of Moreiros (see here) that suggest the existence of palisades. But, for the majority of sites already excavated or prospected by geophysical methods, that evidence is missing and the available data does not allow generalised positive statements about the association of palisades to ditches (and even less of earth banks).
Nevertheless, some sites do suggest that association. One of those sites is Senhora da Alegria, where a larger ditch seems to be associated to a smaller one that runs in parallel, and could be an infrastructure to support a palisade. This is not clear yet, for sometimes the smaller ditch seems to slightly overcome the bigger one, but that could be related to readjustments in time and the hypothesis remains.
Those structures are from a Late Neolithic and generally contemporaneous of the others ditched enclosures that also suggest, as referred above, the presence of palisades. But the Chalcolithic ones do not present the same evidence. Has this association a chronological significance? A question to have in mind.

0077 – “Idols” from Perdigões

This will be a topic for a conference in the next ERA annual meeting that will take place in Lisbon in March 10th.

Perdigões present a great variety of artefacts that are usually interpreted as “Idols” (an issue to be discussed), made in different external raw materials (like ivory, limestone or schist). It is interesting to notice that are very few made in ceramic when compared with other raw materials, which seems to suggest a strong relation between raw material and object meaning and value.
Another interesting aspect is that, if almost all the “idols” appear in funerary contexts, some are present inside ditches and certain types appear (so far) in specific funerary contexts, even when they are contemporaneous with other burial structures.
These issues and others will be presented and debated at the meeting.

0076 - Animal figurines at Perdigões

A paper is in press about the ivory animal figurines at Perdigões enclosure. These are very small sculptures of several animals (ox, deer, birds, rabbit and a possible pig) that have between 1 and 2 cm.

If one of them might be attached to a larger artefact, the others seem to be independent objects.
Why are they so small?
Why, in a period of schematic art, are they so realistic?

They resemble the small animal figurines of Dorset culture (Arctic hunters and gatherers) and its animistic context of function and meaning described by Tim Ingold. Could a similar line of inquiry share some light over the Perdigões ones?

I do believe animistic thought and its world views are an indispensable approach to understand much of the problems that we are confronted with at Perdigões set of enclosures.

0075 – Processes of ditch filling

Dog skull inside ditch 3 of Perdigões.

The nature and the processes of ditch fillings are central to ditched enclosures interpretation. Several elements can be analysed to try to understand those processes. One of them is fauna.

Usually, faunal remains are approached in terms of levels of articulated bones, present and missing bones, structure of the deposition of the bones, animals represented and other associated elements.

Recently, a study of faunal remains from ditches 3 and 4 of Perdigões enclosure done by Cláudia Costa (“Problem of filling the ditches 3 and 4 (Sector I) of Perdigões (Reguengos de Monsaraz”, Estudos do Quaternário, 6, APEQ, Porto, 2099/2010) based on stratigraphic analysis of faunal remains”) showed that the taphonomical approach is also quite relevant and that, together with the analysis of other present elements, can be a precious help to interpret the formation process of the fillings.

Here is what she says in the papers abstract:

“During archaeological intervention on sector I of Perdigões ditch enclosure (Southern Portugal), dated from the IIIrd mil¬lennium B C, a section of Ditch 3 and 4 were excavated. The ditches are parallel “V” shaped structures, excavated on local bed rock, of 1,70 m (Ditch 3) to 2 m (Ditch 4) deep.

The ditches were filled with a sequence of anthropic sediments with archaeological artefacts, mostly potsherds, and vertebrate fauna. The species present in both ditches are suids, the most numerous, followed by bovids (domestic, and an element of an auroch), ovi¬caprids, red deer, horse, dog/wolf, rabbit and hare. The anatomical representation is the opposite in each ditch: in Ditch 3 the most common elements are from cranial and appendicular skeleton, whereas Ditch 4 is filled mostly with elements from axial skeleton. This aspect linked with the specific spatial association of bones and other elements, as pottery or pebbles, with an unequivocal intentional organization, doesn’t seems to fit on the pattern of secondary refuse. The faunal remains seem to integrate the “intentional depositions” at least on some points of the sequence.

On both structures, faunal assemblages are more fragmented on top of the sequence, and on the base, faunal remains tend to be more complete. The transition of more fragmented to less fragmented bones is materialized by intentional depositions layers, unit 58 on Ditch 3 and unit 34 on Ditch 4. On the other hand, in some stratigraphic units, root etching was identified on bone surfaces. Root etching is linked to vegetation that settles on soil profiles top, on the early stages of pedogenic developments. The existence of this phenomena point to a discontinuous filling process of the two ditches, where stratigraphic units remain stable and exposed long enough to pedo¬genetic process begin. On Ditch 3, the assemblage from unit 58, interpreted as “structured depositions”, is one of the most affected assemblages by root etching, which means that after sedimentary formation and installation of “depositional structures”, the unit was exposed. The same unit was affected as well by a natural water channel that mutilates the unit’s surface.
The other natural taphonomical signatures are manganese oxide, which affects continuously all remains from Ditch 3, and in a low percentage Ditch 4, and carbonate calcium that particularly affects the base assemblages in both ditches. This aspect reveals the strati¬graphic stability of the sequence.”

0074 – What’s inside?

Possible reconstitution of the wall of the inside enclosure of Castro de Santiago and of one of the inside huts.

Usually, inside ditched enclosure we only have negative structures, basically constituted by pits. Positive structures are rare or simply nonexistent.

On the contrary, pits are rare in walled enclosures (see here), but positive structures are common (whit some exceptions, such Fraga da Pena). But it is current to find walls or alignments of stones that are usually interpreted as hut infrastructures or stone pavements.

At Castro de Santiago (Beira Alta), inside the inner enclosure, two of those huts were identified where the bedrock makes a sort of basin, and they had central fireplaces built in a hemi hexagonal plan with three slabs.


Hut infrastructures at Castro de Santiago and actual parallel in Africa.



Hut infrastructures at Castro de Santiago.

Although the walled architecture and the use of rock tor formations is similar in Fraga da Pena (just 8 km north in the same valley), the excavations made there didn’t reveal any similar structures inside. Being alike, those two walled enclosures seem to have played different functional roles, although, in terms of social identity management, they might have had similar tasks (as I have argued elsewhere: Valera, 2007).

It is important to notice what’s inside an enclosure and what’s missing to start to give them names. Structures, material cultural, social practices evidences, etc. He must “built” contexts first. So, when we have a surface evidence of a stone wall or a geophysical image of ditches, we must be careful in interpretation. If the general plan of the architecture of an enclosure could give us enough information to develop some analysis and propose some interpretation and develop some ideas, the cases of Castro de Santiago and Fraga da Pena remember us that similar general architectures could enclosure quite different contexts.

0073 – Map of Portuguese Prehistoric Enclosures

This is a map in permanent updating. From now on, it will be available in a separated page, next to the bibliography ones at the top of the blog.
It is, of course, of free use. Citation of the blog is the only request.

0072 - Águas Frias ditched enclosure

Location: Alandroal municipality, Évora district, Alentejo, South Portugal)
Chronology: Late Neolithic
Bibliographic references: Calado & Rocha, 2007.


Plan of Águas Frias (after Clado & Rocha, 2007)

Águas Frias is an interesting enclosure excavated during the rescue program of Alqueva dam, but still to be fully published. Is located in the valley of the Lucefecit river, a tributary of the Guadiana.

It presents in the left bank of the river three apparently concentric ditched enclosures, designed by wavy ditches with “V” profiles, being the middle one more regular in plan than the others and presenting the outside one a complex sequence of negative elongated structures in the north part. Based on its archaeological material the site was dated from Late Neolithic (second half of the 4th millennium BC).

Because the archaeological intervention was done when the dam was already flooding, the Lucefecit was then much larger and it was impossible to know if the ditches go through the river to the other side and the enclosures would be crossed by the water stream, as it happen in other cases (Porto Torrão, in Portugal; Pijotilla in Spain).

Nevertheless, the site was interpreted as a village and the ditches as defensive structures associated to palisades which ended in the water borders, creating an image of a semi circular settlement.


Águas Frias model(after Calado, 2007, in http://megasettlements.blogspot.com/2007/01/re-creating-past_24.html).

An interesting aspect, yet to be explained, is the way in which one of the ditches ends, presenting the extremity in a ramp filled with a stone pavement.


Image of the ditch end (after Calado & Rocha, 2007)

0071 - Enclosures mental images

Some Portuguese enclosures present designs that have patterns that are visually striking from above and as a whole (from an aerial picture or geophysics image, for instance). Just like, with the natural differences, the Nasca “land drawings”. But their builders and users didn´t saw those images (well, there is the question of the possible balloons in Nasca).

But, didn´t they?

Could sites like Xancra, Santa Vitória, Outeiro Alto 2, Monte do Olival or Perdigões not have a previous and spread mental image that the architecture was reproducing? In fact, we have the metal capacity of imagining and visually conceive what we actually cannot see. We built mental maps, for instance, and we can build mental plans, even without flying or drawing.

So, how really were perceived these enclosures in terms of their plans and designs? Could this perception of Xancra ever been formed in the mind of one of its builders or visitors?

0070 - Neolithic ditches and rectangular houses

Senhora da Alegria is a surprising and important site, by the combination of its location, structures and chronologies.

It is located in central Portugal, where the littoral platform gives way to the central mountains and in one of the pathways to the hinterland of Beira Alta central Portugal, where no ditched/palisade enclosures were known until now.

A sequence of occupations dating from Early Neolithic (with “cardial” decorated pottery) to Late Neolithic is being excavated by the Omniknos company (scientific coordination of António Valera and field direction of Tiago do Pereiro and Rui Ramos) in a context of archaeological emergency intervention.

The site presents several ditches, some of them probably corresponding to palisades, that form more than one enclosure, with several moments of construction with structures cutting other structures.


One of the ditches of the eastern side of the site.

Those ditches cut previous early Neolithic layers and some of them may be also from the same period and others from a middle Neolithic phase. These ditches are then covered by layers with positive stone structures, dating from middle/late Neolithic.




One of the ditches of the western side of the site, going under Late Neolithic layers.

It is, therefore, the earliest site with this kind of structures known in Portugal (and in this area of Portugal), revealing that also in western Iberia this architectures are present at the early stages of the Neolithic (as was already documented in eastern Iberia).

But it also present one (at the moment) rectangular house. Rectangular Neolithic houses are quite rare in Western Europe. In Portugal, for the recently excavated and published site of Castelo Belinho in Algarve (by Mário Varela Gomes), post holes were argued to be evidences of the presence of rectangular houses. Nevertheless, some scepticism has been revealed by some scholars relating those interpretations, because of the large and scattered number of post holes. But at the present site the image of the structure is striking and leaves no doubts: a sub-rectangular house (with slightly rounded corners), with central posts aligned with the entrance (facing east), with 10,5 x 5,5 meters.


Image of the house post holes.


One of the post holes of the entrance (left) and one of the central ones, reaveling two construction moments (right) .

So, this archaeological context also presents for the first time in Iberia the “association” of rectangular houses with ditches at a same site and gives strength to the interpretations developed for the Algarve’s site.



Located at in a hinterland transitional point, this site is already fundamental to the research of Neolithic process of West Iberia, to the emerging of the surrounding megalithism (and the Beira Alta one) and to the problems concerning the appearance of ditches/palisades enclosure architectures in the peninsula.

Not everything is bad news in this new year of 2012.

0069 - Topographical differences

I’m now writing the paper presented at the Rome conference, where the main issue was to compare ditched and walled enclosures in South Portugal, since they share the same general space and time.

I centred my analyses in eight aspects: tendency for architectonic separation; topographical location; dimensions; design ; architectonic dynamics and associated practices, cosmological foundation of architecture; relation to funerary practices; practice of metallurgy. Some of these items were already discussed here (dimension, presence of pits).

Today I would like to draw the attention to the topographical differences between the locations of this to kind of architectures. Those differences can be expressed as a more homogeneous location strategy for walled enclosures that prefers exclusively hill tops (or cliff edges or high rocky tors in central and north Portugal), and a more diversified location for ditched enclosures. We can find them also on hill tops (Santa Vitória, Outeiro Alto 2), but they can be in the middle of smooth slops (Xancra, Monte do Olival), in natural amphitheatres (Perdigões, Paraiso), in large valleys (Porto Torrão) or spread from small and flat hill tops, through the slops and to the lower ground (Moreiros 2).

In fact, ditched enclosures do not reveal a particular standard pattern of location. By the contrary, they relate themselves with the landscape in diverse ways, although we can observe some tendencies, like the interest of building facing east (frequently with gates astronomically orientated).

This difference between ditched and walled enclosures is just one amongst others, suggesting that, in general, they didn’t serve exactly the same purposes or, at least, that those architectures were responding and were related to specific practices that were not shared by both.

0068 - Plurality of funerary practices in ditched enclosures

Cremation experiment in progress (Tõnno Jonuks & Marge Konsa, “The revival of Prehistoric burial practices: three archaeological experiments”, 2007)

This is an issue that will be discussed in the becoming meeting on Perdigões research project, next February. There, new radiocarbon dates demonstrate that several different practices regarding bodies manipulations were occurring at the same time (according the method resolution capability) in several areas of the enclosure and in different structures.

The data that is being obtained at Perdigões, as I have said already elsewhere, demands new theoretical approaches to funerary practices in Late Neolithic / Chalcolithic, namely the ones that deal with the problems of the unity and ontology of the body and that develop relational conceptions of burial places and structures. The notion of necropolis, as a clear individualized space for the dead, is clearly at risk in Perdigões, as in other large ditched enclosures.

0067 - Ditches are spreading to Central/North Portugal

Plan of Gonçalvinhos (Mafra, Lisbon) small ditch segment (after Sousa, A.C., 2010, O PENEDO DO LEXIM E A SEQUÊNCIA DO NEOLÍTICO FINAL E CALCOLÍTICO DA PENINSULA DE LISBOA, PhD thesis presented to FLUL.)

If the last decade and a half revealed a concentration of ditched enclosures and ditched structures in South Portugal hinterland (and I believe that some negative structures sectioned by Edia tube lines are yet to be correctly evaluated, probably enlarging the numbers and the “troubles”), the recent years are indicating that those archaeological realities are also present in central and north Portugal, in different topographical contexts. Some of those sites, in present process of excavation, may even be the earliest known in west Iberia with ditches.

Ditches are now emerging in Lisbon peninsula (as the one in the image), in the Mondego basin (just at the “gate” of the Beira Alta hinterland), in the deep hinterland of Beira Interior (East of the central mountains system) or near the coast, in Aveiro or Maia (north of Oporto). The north half of Portugal is revealing what should be expected, if we attend to the general picture (European and Iberian): that, like megalithism (to which they seem to be well connected), ditches structures and ditched enclosures are present and that specific research programmes should be design to detect them (since local topography and land use makes them more difficult to detect than in the southern plains).

I suspect that the near future will bring some surprises about the building of enclosures in the central coast of Portugal and their importance to the so called process of “becoming Neolithic”.

0066 - Funerary practices in Perdigões

(Click the image)

A meeting for presenting results and debate perspectives of a ongoing project of research on funerary practices at Perdigões ditched enclosure will take place in February 2012.

0065 - Human remains at Zambujal enclosure

Recently, at the Rome conference, Michael Kunst provided an interesting information about the research conducted by DAI at Castro de Zambujal walled enclosure. During the study of faunal remains, about 300 human bone remains were detected.

Until now, only one structure at Leceia and another in Castelo Velho presented human remains in walled enclosures and were interpreted in quite different terms.

This new revelation at Zambujal, still to be contextualized, reinforce the idea that some ditched enclosures have already stressed: human depositions in Western Iberia Chalcolithc are a complex and diversified practice that cannot be restricted to the traditional notion of necropolis.

0064 – A (fragmented) sequence of ditch 4 of Perdigões

Horizontal and localized depositions of stones, pottery shards and faunal remains, separated by clay deposits. At the bottom, some stone agglomeration, before a layer with calcite precipitation.

0063 - What's the meaning?

It's not from Portugal and it is not about ditched or walled enclosures, but about a famous henge. It is absolutely hilarious, but... we could do similar stuff about some of our own enclosures.
See here

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

0061 – Ditched enclosures at Alcalar

Alcalar partially geophysical image of a complex of gates and ditches (after Morán, 2010)

Location: Portimão municipality, Faro district, Algarve, South Portugal)
Chronology: Chalcolithic
Bibliographic references: Móran, 2008; 2010.

Alcalar is a large enclosure surrounded by several necropolis, with megalithic tombs, hypogea and huge tholoi.

The general plan of the enclosures is not yet kwon. Difficult to survey, due to ownership section of the local land, some areas have been submitted to geophysical prospection, but only a few parts of the results are published and available.

One of those parts corresponds to a complex system of gates through several ditches, some of them presenting configurations (in form of “hook”) similar to the ones observed in other enclosures.

At the inside there is a concentration of pits. As usually, they were interpreted as “silos and considered to belong to a storage area. Once again, I advert to the need of not assuming pits as silos without evidence. And suggesting a storage area with just a fragment image of a large site is also a risk. If we look to Perdigões global image, and assume that the thousands of pits were silos, then Perdigões we be just a huge warehouse (and excavations are, naturally, showing a quite different situation).


Concentration of stones inside ditched (after Morán, 2008)

As to the ditches, only two segments of a wavy ditch were excavated, that had 2,5m wide at the top. Inside, concentrations of stones and some parts of animals in anatomical connection, including a complete lamb, other disperse and abundant faunal remains of vertebrates and of shells. These deposits, that in different approaches could be seen as structured depositions, were interpreted as garbage dumping from domestic units.

Supported in a materialistic approach, the site is seen by its researchers as a settlement and a political centre of a pristine form of state, from where an elite rule through coercion a vast hierarchical territory.

0060 – Portuguese ditched enclosures at the IX CIA

A paper and two posters are being presented at the IX Congress of Iberian Archaeometry, held in Lisbon. The paper focus on the results of the project on Cosmological Foundation of Enclosures Architectures analysed through geophysical survey. The posters present the geophysical results at Xancra and Moreiros 2.
A Project of NIA-ERA, financed by Gulbenkian Foundation (that is hosting the conference).

0059 – Isn’t quantity a quality?

Hundreds of pits in partial images of Xancra and Perdigões enclosures

Another astonishing difference between ditched and walled enclosures is the association to pits.

Traditionally, even when not excavated, what looks like a pit is designated by “silo”. When they are numerous they became a storage area controlled by an elite. But when excavated, usually became “silos” reused as garbage dumps or graves or something else. But the evidence that they ever stored cereal or any kind of food is rare, when we think about the number of these structures known: thousands of thousands. Maybe we should call them just pits. There is no functional interpretation involved, and then, after research and evidence, decide what else to call them.

But what is interesting, when we compared walled and ditched enclosure (the issue of my conference in Rome), is the fact that at ditched enclosures we usually found tens, hundreds, thousands of pits, and in walled enclosures we found one or two. Well, maybe three.

De difference is striking, once again, and the traditional explanation doesn’t explain. If the ditched enclosures performed the same general function of the walled enclosures, then, why the striking difference? Don´t people in walled enclosures need storing? Aren´t they exploiting the common folks and appropriate the surplus of their work? Are they not producing garbage that needs dumping?

Well, apart from the irony, the remaining fact is that the issue has not been addressed until now. And it must. Because this is a significant difference (amongst others) that suggests that walled and ditched enclosures shouldn’t be treated as simple homologies.

0058 – Ditch 2 of Porto Torrão and beaker pottery

Beaker pottery in ditch 2 of Porto Torrão after Valera & Filipe, 2004.

As commented in the previous post, beaker pottery is recorded only in the large complexes of ditched enclosures in South Portugal (Perdigões, Porto Torrão and Alcalar)

At Porto Torrão the presence of this pottery is, inside ditch 2, almost from the beginning of sedimentation, but only with International style. The geometric and incise styles only appear in the upper levels of the sedimentation, where both progressively became more representative than the International style, specially the geometric one.

A confirmation of the chronological “décalage” of the different styles. But also a confirmation that, in these large enclosures, some ditches are still functional in the beaker times.

At Perdigões, also in the outside ditch (ditch 1) incised beaker pottery was recorded in the upper half layers of the sedimentation (Lago et al. 1998).

0057 - Beaker and ditched enclosures

Beaker pottery from Porto Torrão (after Valera & Filipe, 2004)

One interesting issue about the Portuguese ditched enclosures is the distribution of Bell Beaker pottery. We have now an inventory of almost thirty ditched enclosures, the great majority located in the Alentejo’s hierterland.

But when we look to the actual distribution of Bell Beaker pottery in ditched enclosures we are striking by one evidence: beaker pottery, characteristic of late Chalcolithic (mainly 2nd half of the 3rd millennium BC), only appears in the ditched enclosures that grow to achieve large areas and extreme structural complexity: Perdigões, Porto Torrão and Alcalar.

That suggests that the smaller enclosures didn´t reach the 2nd half of the millennium or were not permeable to beaker influences. Only the ones that became large complexes did incorporate beaker phenomena. On the other hand, several walled enclosures present beaker pottery (Monte da Tumba; São Brás) or were reoccupied in beaker times (such as Porto das Carretas or Monte do Tosco) reinforcing the differences between these categories of sites.

This is another particularity that needs careful reflexion. Even more if we add the fact (stressed in Valera, 2007 and in the recent publication of the Fronteira meeting proceedings) that there is a tendency for the small sites to present just one specific beaker style (Porto das Carretas, Miguens 3, Monte do Tosco, Barrada do Grilo, etc.) while Porto Torrão or Perdigões (the large enclosures) present influences of the several beaker styles and a significant amount of this kind of materials (especially Porto Torrão).

A circumstance that reinforces the idea that the latter development of larger ditched enclosures represents a transition to a new social dynamic that is progressively alien to the cosmological/ideological frames that generated in the first place the ditched enclosure phenomena in the Neolithic.

The Cathedral’s Era, in fact.

0056 – Dimension matters

The slide presents Portuguese walled and ditched enclosures at the same scale (the bigger walled enclosure is not Portuguese, but Spanish and near the border – Pijotilla -, used to substitute a similar Portuguese site – Porto Torrão – that doesn´t have yet its integral plan defined). The differences of sizes reached by some ditched enclosures are striking.

At Rome, my presentation was about the connections between walled and ditched enclosures in South Portugal. After established a general spatial and chronological simultaneity, several disparities were stressed. One of them was dimension.

Walled enclosures present small and, let us say, medium sizes (from less than a ha to 2 or 3 ha). Ditched enclosures present equal sizes, but some of them grew bigger, and reached areas from 20 to more than 100 ha (excluding the surrounding necropolis).

This is a striking fact that needs explanation. Why some ditched enclosures did grew so much during the Chalcolithic? Why, in the same region and time, walled enclosures kept small dimensions?

The answer, taking into account other several differences not referred in the present post but stressed at the conference, has to do with different social roles. My suggestion (to be developed in the paper) is that specific social roles of ditched enclosures, such as identity management, control and reproduction of cosmological order through architecture and social activities and funerary and ritualized practices, allowed some of them to grow and became regional centres of social aggregation and living metaphors of the cosmos.

Nevertheless, their size and meanings can somehow be seen as the “singing of the swan” of Neolithic world views. By the end of the 3rd millennium or beginning of the 2nd cal BC they are “dead” and a new social dynamics is already in course.

In a way, they remind us of the Cathedral’s Era.

0055 – Rome reunion on Chalcolithic (October, 2011)

The research of Portuguese enclosures was represented at the conference STRATEGIE INSEDIATIVE E METALLURGIA. I RAPPORTI TRA ITALIA E LA PENISOLA IBERICA NEL PRIMO CALCOLITICO ,promoted by the German Archaeological Institute, through a presentation made by me (representing NIA-ERA), comparing walled and ditched enclosures and proposing a general different social role for those architectures in the South of Portugal, by a presentation of Rui Parreira and Elena Morán of the ditched enclosure of Alcalar and its regional context from a materialistic point of view, and by a presentation of Michael Kunst about the research on Zambujal.

If the apparent antiquity of the emergency of metallurgy in North Italy was one of the main debated issues, the absent or reduced number of enclosures (walled or ditched) in that region was also a striking surprise when comparing to Iberian dynamics, where metallurgy occurred at least a millennium later.

One thing, though, seems to be shared by both regions: the emergency of metallurgy is not particularly linked to the development of enclosure architectures, for in Iberia enclosures appear before metallurgy, and in Italy metallurgy developed with no connection to enclosures.

Food for thought about the social role of both archaeological realities.

0054 – Santa Justa walled enclosure

Santa Justa(after Golçalves, 1989)

Location: Alcoutim municipality, Faro district, Algarve, South Portugal)
Chronology: Chalcolithic
Bibliographic references: Gonçalves, 1989.

Excavated during the late seventies and the eighties of the XX century, Santa Justa is a small walled enclosure located on a hilltop. Presenting a general ellipsoidal plan, it roughly measures 20m by 30 m.

Initially, it was an enclosure with to opposite gates, located in the extreme tops of the ellipse. Then, several phases of construction were detected, providing the structures of bastions, wall reinforcements and the closing of one gate and strengthening of the other.

Structures interpreted as huts were detected inside, but also outside the walls.

Metallurgic activities were detected inside and, because of the size, the site was interpreted as a “fortified farm” of farmers and metallurgists of the 3rd millennium BC.

Recently, in a materialistic approach (Morán e Parreira, 2009), the site was seen as a response to a need of protection of an elite interests and products. This elite would control through ideological coercion, and not through violence (the solution that historical materialism found to deal with symbolism), the common people of the community and would present itself as an assurance of social stability. In this context of power display, the walled enclosures such as Santa Justa would, not just reinforce, but also symbolically express that political power and prestige.

Santa Justa became one example of what historical materialistic approach calls “symbolic euphemism”: control, not through direct coercion, but through ideological persuasion and deception. Every symbolic meaning is at the service of a social strategy of power to sustain social inequality.

A theoretical elaboration that, somehow, seems to rises above the available empirical data.

Bibliographic references: Morán, H. e Parreira, R. (2009), “La exhibición del poder en el Megalistismo del Suroeste Peninsular: tres casos de studio en el extreme sur de Portugal”, Cuadernos de Prehistoria de la Universidad de Granada, 19, p.139-162.

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.

0052 - Torrão ditched enclosure

Location: Elvas municipality, Portalegre district, Alentejo, South Portugal)
Chronology: Late Neolithic
Bibliographic references: Lago & Albergaria, 2001.


Plan of Torrão and view of the ditch, after Lago & Albergaria, 2001)

Located in a small hill, Torrão revealed a little ditched enclosure. Excavated in a part of the ditch's route, it has apparently an ellipsoidal or oval shape, with a maximum length of about 50 meters.

The ditch is also small. With a general profile in a “V” shape, it has 1,5 meters wide and 1 meter deep. Inside and outside, pits were detected and excavated, revealing deposits with pottery, grinding stones and some lithic materials. Practically nothing was detected outside te negative structures.

But another interesting circumstance of Torrão is the fact that the enclosure is not exactly at the top of the hill. In fact, it only occupies the NE half of hilltop and the beginning of the slope in that side, sharing the other half with a (previous?) cromlech of also small menhirs. This cromlech was already very destroyed, but the distribution of the monoliths shows that both enclosures didn’t overlapped, a circumstance that could reflect, if not a contemporaneous function, knowledge and a respect for previous symbolic structures. In this context, it is also meaningful the proximity of a small (again) megalithic tomb (proto megalithic by Portuguese typological standards), located just some tens of meters way, in a lower platform of the hill.

Ten years ago, in Portugal, ditched enclosures were steel just settlements. It was in that context that Torrão was first published. But the evident proximity and relation to megalithic structures led the authors to consider the importance of symbolic meanings and ritual practices as main questions to put to the site in future research. Identity and ancestors were issues that emerged in the text at the end.

Today, facing the recent data and the different theoretical approaches, Torrão is a striking example of the limitations (not to say inaccuracy) of the undemanding interpretation of a significant number of these complex sites as simple fortified settlements (in a village sense).