Location: Alandroal municipality, Évora district, Alentejo,
South Portugal)
Chronology: Late Neolithic
Bibliographic references: (Calado e Roque, 2013)
Chronology: Late Neolithic
Bibliographic references: (Calado e Roque, 2013)
The ditched enclosure of Juromenha 1 was detected and
surveyed in the context of the Alqueva dam mitigation process, in the early XXI
century. The survey revealed a plan that suggests a wavy sinuous ditch, with a
linear one running parallel.
Plan of Juromenha 1 (after Calado e Roque, 2013)
The sinuous ditch has a “v” profile, with 2 meters
wide and 1,8 meters deep. Four radiocarbon dates put this ditch between
3400-2900 BC.
Ditch section (after Calado e Roque, 2013)
If wavy ditches became more frequent in the 3rd
millennium BC in Alentejo, Juromenha 1 clearly shows (as Águas Frias and Ponte
da Azambuja also do) that this design emerged in a Neolithic context, where we
must search for the reasons that will allow us to explain and interpret these
layouts. And not in the chalcolithic walled bastions, as once was supposed.
