0439 - New Publication on Perdigões enclosure

The monographic study of Tomb 4 of Perdigões enclosure has just been published. It can be downloaded here: http://www.nia-era.org/publicacoes/cat_view/18-monografias-livros

0434 - The ditched enclosure of Borralhos published

Magnetogram of Borralhos ditched enclosures. Published in Valera, Pererio 2020. You may download the publication here.

0433 - About social resistance strategies at Perdigões enclosure

This video talks a bit about the strategies of social resistance and identity management that we may detect in the funerary practices at Perdigões enclosure (in Portuguese).

0427 - Perdigões at an exhibition of Iberian prehistoric idols

An exhibition joining some of the most fantastic Neolithic and Chalcolithic idols was organised at the MARQ (Archaeological Museum of Alicante, Spain). The ditched enclosure of Perdigões is represented with several items and a paper on the the role of these human figurines at the site was published in the catalogue of the exhibition. This is the image of the Spanish version. But an English one is in press.

0430 - Completing the magnetogram of Monte da Contenda ditched enclosure

In the context of a collaboration between the NIA-ERA project on ditched enclosures and the University of Kiel, the geophysics of Monte da Contenda enclosure was completed and published here. Another highly complex site with many enclosures, some of them using the stream as a border and having more than 400m long. And in the centre, another one of those patterned wavy enclosures, so typical of the Guadiana basin. This project of NIA-ERA has been giving a major contribution to change our knowledge about the Prehistoric landscape of Alentejo in empirical and theoretical terms. And to save some of these sites (or the knowledge about them) from the destruction in process due to intensive agriculture with the connivance (by absence and impotency) of the Portuguese State. 

0429 - Publication on intentional fragmentation and depositions

This book brings the conferences presented in Lisbon 2017 about fragmentation and depositions in Pre and Proto Historic Portugal. It has some information and debate about the presence of human remains inside the ditches of Perdigões and depositions in other contexts of ditched and walled enclosures.

To be download here.

0428 - One year of Neolithic Perdigões

It was precisely one year ago that the book on the Neolithic phases of Perdigões enclosures was published online. During this year it was downloaded for almost a thousand times (980 to be precise). It deals with the emergence of the site and its first 500 years of development, between 3400-2900 BC.
To be downloaded here.

0426 - Publication: Cardim 6 - a tholos from the enclosure of Porto Torrão

The study of Cardim 6, a tholos belonging to the complex of ditched enclosures of Porto Torrão (Ferreira do Alentejo, Beja) is published and available for free download here.

0412 - Perdigões publication

It was published the volume 1 of the series of monographs of Perdigões ditched enclosure. It reports only to the Neolithic phase of the site. It can be download here.

0409 - Paper on Ferreira do Alentejo prehistoric ditched enclosures

Download here.

0374 - Archaeometry of Perdigões Bell Beakers

0356 - New master thesis on Perdigões enclosure

In October 18th, a new master thesis on Perdigões enclosures was presented:

“Exploring Chalcolithic diet and mobility of humans and animals from Perdigões site”, by Indre Zalaite.

It was presented at University of Évora, in ARCHMAT program (ERASMUS MUNDUS MASTER IN ARCHaeological MATerials Science) and was also part of the project on mobility at Perdigões enclosures (see here) approved and financed by the Portuguese Science Foundation.

It is a first output of that project, which results will soon be published, product of the collaboration of the three institutions involved in the project integrated in the Global Program of Archaeological Research of Perdigões: ERA Arqueologia, Hércules Laboratory – Uévora and ICArEHB-UAlg. Center.

0339 - And another paper on Portuguese Ditched Enclosures

Now about the relations of those sites with funerary contexts at several scales (from cosmology and landscapes to specific funerary structures). It is available in Academia and Research Gate.

0338 - The twilight of enclosures

Available here

0335 - The twilight of enclosures

A paper that was recently published about the trajectory of ditched enclosures in western Iberia:

Valera, A.C. (2015), "Social change in the late 3rd millennium BC in Portugal: The twilight of enclosures". In: H. Meller/R. Risch/R. Jung/H. W. Arz (eds.), 2200 BC – Ein Klimasturz als Ursache für den Zerfall der Alten Welt? 2200 BC – A climatic breakdown as a cause for the collapse of the old world?. 7. Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag vom 23. Bis 26. Oktober 2014 in Halle (Saale). 7th Archaeological Conference of Central Germany October 23-26, 2013 in Halle (Saale). Tagungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle 13,1–2 (Halle [Saale].

Bela Vista 5. One of the latest ditched enclosures of western Iberia 3rd Millennium BC.

Here are the Final Remarks:

"In Portugal, especially in the Centre-South, the end of the 3^rd millennium BC also marks the terminus of the social path that was developing since the Late Neolithic. Is this a direct consequence of a climate break down, of incompatibilities of the global social system or both?

What follows immediately at the beginning of the 2^nd millennium BC shows that the operated change was of structural scale, affecting the social and the economic, but also the ideological, the cosmological and the ontological dimensions of communities, their ways of organizing the territories and building meaningful landscapes (as it happens with the enclosures of Perdigões and the megalithic monuments in the Ribeira do Álamo valley) and, most probably, affecting their demographic composition. Some of those changes can be traced back to the third quarter of the 3^rd millennium BC, namely the increase of social differentiation and a progressive emergence of individuality in funerary practices. But during that second half of the millennium enclosures, one of the emblematic expressions of Neolithic trajectories, maintain their social role and through their architectures and social practices, were still organizing the landscapes and the social life. So structural changes were in course during the second half of the 3^rd millennium BC and these changes cannot be explain by hexogen conditions to the social system.
            However, the abrupt disappearance of enclosures in the last centuries of the 3^rd millennium BC is suggesting that some event-like situation may have interfered with that trajectory of social change, but the archaeological record, namely the anthropological one, do not show signs of clear generalized conflict or disease and evidence of climate changes significant enough to be responsible for triggering structural social changes are not suggested by the scarce available palaeoenvironmental data. An environmental impact in the last centuries of the 3^rd millennium may not be ruled out, but is not yet demonstrated in this region and especially would not justify the social changes already in course (like the structural ideological changes behind the progressively substitution of collective burials by individual ones). It could however help to understand a sudden demographic break down, a reorganization of settlement patterns and territorialities and a temporary collapse of large scale trade networks. But why enclosures, namely the ditched enclosures, were built no more? For that we must have a cultural answer: the social reasons that were behind their appearance and development (and that were related to the Neolithic cosmologies and to the ways they embodied the social life – Valera, 2012b) were no longer there in the first half of the 2^nd millennium BC. Immanent social developments and external environmental causes may be combined to explain the abrupt changes and the outcome observable at the beginning of the 2^nd millennium BC, but the relative weight of each element is difficult to evaluate at the moment.
There is also the question of the divergent trajectories presented by some walls enclosure in the Center and North Portugal, namely Zambujal, Castanheiro do Vento and Castelo Velho, where these sites remain occupied and wall construction continues. It is not clear, however, if this traduces in fact continuity or if the occupations present different characteristics and are in some way integrated in new forms of territorial organization. In fact, these continuities are the exception, not the rule and like in the South, changes in several dimensions of the social organization can be appreciated by the beginning of the 2^nd millennium: the abandonment of the practice of collective burials, the end of the production of iconographic materials, the decay of large scale trade networks, a profound transformation of the ceramic equipment and an increase of the production of metal weaponry frequently associated to individual status is also documented, especially in Estremadura. So it is not totally clear if the continuity of the occupation with building activity in some walled enclosures is traducing different regional socio-economic trajectories or just local and punctual peculiarities of a more general trend of social change.
            In spite of the significant developments of the last decades in the research of social complexity in the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic of western Iberia, there is still missing important and consistent information about what happened in the last quarter of the 3^rd millennium BC and about the nature of the break of the previous social trajectories. Answers, therefore, have been relaying essentially in the logical formats of theoretical models, frequently with weak empirical support. Interdisciplinary research specifically orientated to this problem is needed, namely to obtain well dated and characterized site occupations of the last quarter of the 3^rd millennium BC, to appraise the population of the period in demographic terms and to adequately evaluate and measure climate trends, before we can more confidently talk about this process of social change."

0316 - New paper on portuguese enclosures.

It has been recently published and is available at Academia.edu and Reserach Gate.

0276 - Published

Contents

The times and timings of enclosures

Alasdair Whittle

Enclosures &burial in Middle &Late Neolithic Britain

Alex Gibson

The place of human remains anf Funerary practices in Recent Neolithic ditched and

walled enclosures in the West of France (IV-III Mill. BC)
Audrey Blanchard, Jean-Noël Guyodo, Ludovic Soler

Funerary practices and body manipulation at Neolithic and Chalcolithic Perdigões ditched

enclosures (South Portugal)
António Carlos Valera, Ana Maria Silva, Claudia Cunha, Lucy Shaw Evangelista

Skeletons in the ditch: funerary activity in ditched enclosures of Porto Torrão (Ferreira do

Alentejo, Beja)
Filipa Rodrigues

Enclosures and funerary practices: about an archaeology in search for the symbolic

dimension of social relations.
Susana Oliveira Jorge

Human Bones from Chalcolithic Walled Enclosures of Portuguese Estremadura:

The Examples of Zambujal and Leceia
Michael Kunst, João Luís Cardoso, Anna Waterman

Human sacrifices with cannibalistic practices in a pit enclosure? The extraordinary early

Neolithic site of Herxheim (Palatinate, Germany)
Andrea Zeeb-Lanz

Gendered burials at an henge-like enclosure near Magdeburg, central Germany: a tale of

revenge and ritual killing?
André Spatzier Marcus Stecher, Kurt W. Alt. François Bertemes

The Copper age ditched settlement at Conelle de Arcevia (Central Italy)

Alberto Cazzella, Giulia Recchia

Funerary practices in the ditched enclosures of Camino de las Yeseras: Ritual, Temporal

and Spatial Diversity
Patrícia Rios, Corina Liesau, Concepción Blasco

Recent Prehistory enclosures & funerary practices

José Enrique Márquez Romero, Vítor Jímenez Jaímez

0271 - Bela Vista 5 monography

It is edited the nº2 of ERA MONOGRÁFICA dedicated to the cerimonial enclosure of Bela Vista 5 (Beja, South Portugal).

Free download here

0266 - Coming soon