0334 - Human remains in ditches at Porto Torrão

The revision that is being done to materials from the excavations of Era Arqueologia in Porto Torrão is providing new information.

As in other ditches of the site, the Chalcolithic ditch 2 has also human remains deposited together with faunal remains and other archaeological materials.

 

 

The deposition of scattered human remains in ditches is a practice that is being more and more frequent in Iberian large enclosures, such as Perdigões, Valencina de la Concepción, Pijotilla and naturally Porto Torrão. Something that is well known in European ditched enclosures, confirming social practices that have a wide distribution, possibly related to shared cosmologies at a large scale.

0333 - Excavating at Montoito ditched enclosure

The site of Montoito has recently been affected again by deep plouwing. Before planting the vineyard and, taking into account the results obtained on site by the geofisic survey, we decided to conduct a small test-pit in the second ditch in order to get a stratigraphic reading. Although a bigger excavation was recommended the circumstances did not make it possible. Nevertheless the results of this small intervention improved the knowledge of the site. 

The excavation has identified a ditch with the V shape, 3 meters wide and 3 deep, cut in the bedrock at a ratio of 1:1. The ceramic collected lets us propose the occupation of the site in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly soon after. Thus, the small enclosure ditches of Montoito must have been contemporary of the latest ditches of Perdigões that lies just 8km South.

Rui Mataloto

0332 - New paper on portuguese ditched enclosures

About the large ditched enclosures of Salvada and Monte das Cabeceiras 2 (Beja) and the interesting questions they put by being so close to each other.

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.

0330 - The exhibition of Perdigões: the posters

For those who cannot go to Évora and visit the temporary exhibition about Perdigões ditched enclosures the posters that go along with the archaeological materials may be seen here.

0329 - Enclosing is organizing the world

Creating borders, opposing spaces with different meanings: the organization of space is an expression of human forms of cognition. Enclosing is a structural phenomenon, a way of thinking and organizing the world that cannot be reduced to a defence strategy.

0328 - Perdigões in Évora next week

Perdigões: an aggregation centre in Prehistory and in the Present

15.00 – 16.00

Perdigões: a synthesis of 18 years of research of an exceptional site

António Carlos Valera

 Workshop

16.30 – 17.30

The display of Perdigões: limitations and potentials

Miguel Lago

 

The anthropological record of Perdigões: evaluation from the case study of tomb 1

Lucy Shaw Evangelista

The faunal record of Perdigões: data from the study of 15 000 studied bones.

Cláudia Costa

The research of ditched enclosures in Portugal: reasons for the exceptional status of Perdigões.

António Carlos Valera

 Followed by a debate and visit to an exhibition of Perdigões contexts and materials.