0187 - Castro de Santiago also at the museum

Castro de Santiago walled enclosure was the first site I excavated in Fornos de Algodres, from 1988 to 1996 and in 2006. As Fraga da Pena, the site is displayed in the local archaeological museum. Here are the posters that can be seen there.

I call your attention to the last one. To a specific situation, where Santiago is an interesting case: the presence of all “chaine operatoire” for the production, use and reuse of polished stone tools.

0178 – Adapting and incorporating

That seems to be a significant difference between walled and ditched enclosures in Portugal.

Tor in the top of a hill used to built Castro de Santiago during Chalcolithic

Naturally, as argued before (for instance here), no building is performed in an insignificant space. Everything built is in dialogue with a local landscape, with its meanings, visibilities, resources, particularities. And all of those previous conditions are, in one way or another, incorporated in the building.

But when we compare walled and ditched enclosures we can observe that the former tend to present a great variety of forms of adaptation and incorporation of previous elements of the landscape, while the ditched enclosures mainly reflect a dialogue with topography, geology and visibility conditions.

Rocks, tors or cliffs, are usually incorporated as part of the structures that enclose. Although in other parts of Europe we can see that also in ditched enclosures (like the French “enceinte à éperon”), so far those solutions were not identified in Portuguese ditched enclosures.

Large wall from rock to rock that defines the inner enclosure at Castro de Santiago.

In terms of the architectonic features, walled enclosures seem to use the available natural conditions in a different way.  Perhaps one of the reasons is that the design, the layout, was less significant than the ones presented by ditched enclosures and answered to different goals.

Plan of the several walled structures that, together with the previous rocks, define Castro de Santiago enclosure.

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? 

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.

0016 - Castro de Santiago walled enclosure

Double wall of inside enclosure.


Door of the outside enclosure.

Location: Fornos de Algodres municipality, Guarda district, Beira Alta, Central Portugal)
Chronology: Chalcolithic
Bibliographic references: Valera, 1997; 2007.

Excavated between 1988 and 1996, Castro de Santiago is a walled enclosure dated from Chalcolithic (first quarter of the 3rd millennium BC, by radiocarbon). Distant just 8 Kms from Fraga da Pena, and in the same valley, the site also uses a large granitic tor existent in a prominent hilltop to form two enclosures.

The inner one uses the top rocks that naturally form a “U” shape open to South. The enclosure is established by a double wall with a bastion structure built in the open side of the rock sequence. The two walls structure an entrance in “S” shape and to phases of occupation were detected inside, with huts, fire places and cobble structures.

The outside enclosures is defined by two parallel walls, one at East and the other at West, uniting rock formation at south of the inner enclosure. There is no evidence of structures and areas of sedimentation are rare and small, since the ground is basically constituted by the granitic bedrock.

The site was interpreted as a walled settlement that played a decisive role in the emergence and consolidation of a local identity during the first half of the millennia, process that was declining (through integration in a wider regional system of social relations) by the time Fraga da Pena appeared (Last quarter of the millennia).