0314 - Horta do Pinheiro 6 dated

The ditch at Horta do Pinheiro 6 has been dated by radiocarbono from Late Neolithic. There are now 15 ditched sites with occupations dating from Late Neolithic in Alentejo, plus the occupation of Middle Neolithic at Perdigões.

0291 - Just 2km away from Monte da Tumba...

 

Image of the excavated section of the ditch (photo by Tiago Nunes)

…walled enclosure dated from the Chalcolithic a new ditched site was discovered and a section of a ditch was excavated by Era Arqueologia (for Edia S.A.). It is a relatively small ditch where some manual pottery and faunal remains were recovered. The pottery is constituted only by simple hemi spherical bowls. Bones will be used for obtain radiocarbon dates in order to determine the chronology of this structure. Nearby there are several pits or hypogea with persevered human remains (but with chronology still uncertain). This is one of the most western ditched site in Alentejo, right in the limits of the geological border with the sandier lands of the Portuguese littoral platform.   

0280 - Another one...

… found in the context of Alqueva water supply network. Here you can see how difficult it can be, sometimes, to detect a negative structure of this type: a darker spot, with some charcoals, a fragment of a Pecten maximus shell, corresponds to the filling of a ditch crossed by the trench open to receive the water tube.

It is, again, located in the Sado basin, in a peripheral zone to the concentration of ditched enclosures in Alentejo. They are slowly appearing in more western areas in the region. I have to update the enclosures map.