0133 – Murteira 6

Ditch A from Murteira 6 (after Porfírio et al, 2012)

Location: Beja municipality, Beja district, Alentejo, South Portugal)
Chronology: Chalcolithic
Bibliographic references: Porfírio et al. 2012.

At Murteira 6 four sections of small ditches (0,40 to 0,70 m deep by 0,80 to 1,20m wide) were surveyed. At least two ditch sections are crossing, with one overlapping the other. No general plan is available yet, so the layouts of the ditches are not known. Archaeological materials point to a Chalcolithic chronology, probably of the first half of the third millennium BC.

Enclosures defined by small ditches (some can be infrastructures of palisades) are known in several other sites, like Torrão, the ditches 5 and 12 of Perdigões, the ditch 2 of Ponte da azambuja, or some of the ditches of Senhora da Alegria. All of these examples, though, date from Neolithic. Murteira 6 apparently shows, for the first time, very small ditches dating from Chalcolithic.    

Plan of the ditches at Murteira 6 (after Porfírio et al, 2012)