0250 – Ditched enclosures and funerary contexts

Plan of Torrão ditched enclosure, associated to a cromelec just in the South limit of the ditch and to a megalithic grave in a SW small topographic elevation. (Plan provided by Era Arqueologia S.A.)

This will be the issue of a paper of mine that will be presented at a session in the next UISPP meeting in Burgos. Last week, in the context of my NIA activities, I made a preliminary approach to the subject at the University of Valência. The general idea is to stress that the relations between ditched enclosures and funerary contexts can be perceived in four main dimensions: the sharing of a same cosmological background expressed in their architectures; the way the background is expressed in the combined constructing of meaningful landscapes; the way ditched enclosures and funerary contexts are mutually spatially structured; the way enclosures are assumed as stages for funerary contexts and practices.

In Alentejo’s hinterland we start to have evidence that allow us to address these dimensions and show how deeply ditched enclosures and megalithic and none megalithic funerary and ceremonial contexts are related in the region. They are part of a same Neolithic world understanding that seems to abruptly change by the end of the 3rd millennium BC. 

0192 – Enclosures and cromlechs

Cromlech of Almendres, near Évora

There are several parallels that can be established between ditched enclosures and cromlechs in South Portugal Late Neolithic. Not just some cromlechs show a topographical implantation and relations with the landscape similar to several ditched enclosures, like being in a slope orientated to East and with relation to sun events (like Vale Maria do Meio or Almendres), but others seem to be in close spatial relation with ditched enclosures. That can be seen at Torrão and Perdigões.

Neolithic Perdigões: the strong black lines mark the known (at the moment) Neolithic structures.

In Torrão the cromlech is just outside the Late Neolithic ditch and in Perdigões is a couple of hundred meters to the East of the early ditches also dated from Late Neolithic. In both sites there aren´t yet empirical evidences that directly connect the enclosures to the cromlechs, but being totally contemporary or not, the general idea that we get from the location and orientation of several Neolithic cromlechs and ditched enclosures, and from the proximity that some of them present, is that there is an ideological connection between them and that they, being different, respond to same shared general principles.

There seems to be a strong link between some ditched enclosures and some megalithic structures in Alentejo, as complementary means of expressing and organizing Neolithic world views and landscapes.

We have several Neolithic cromlechs in the region. Besides Torrão and Perdigões, I wonder how many have an unrevealed ditched enclosure nearby.

0052 - Torrão ditched enclosure

Location: Elvas municipality, Portalegre district, Alentejo, South Portugal)
Chronology: Late Neolithic
Bibliographic references: Lago & Albergaria, 2001.


Plan of Torrão and view of the ditch, after Lago & Albergaria, 2001)

Located in a small hill, Torrão revealed a little ditched enclosure. Excavated in a part of the ditch's route, it has apparently an ellipsoidal or oval shape, with a maximum length of about 50 meters.

The ditch is also small. With a general profile in a “V” shape, it has 1,5 meters wide and 1 meter deep. Inside and outside, pits were detected and excavated, revealing deposits with pottery, grinding stones and some lithic materials. Practically nothing was detected outside te negative structures.

But another interesting circumstance of Torrão is the fact that the enclosure is not exactly at the top of the hill. In fact, it only occupies the NE half of hilltop and the beginning of the slope in that side, sharing the other half with a (previous?) cromlech of also small menhirs. This cromlech was already very destroyed, but the distribution of the monoliths shows that both enclosures didn’t overlapped, a circumstance that could reflect, if not a contemporaneous function, knowledge and a respect for previous symbolic structures. In this context, it is also meaningful the proximity of a small (again) megalithic tomb (proto megalithic by Portuguese typological standards), located just some tens of meters way, in a lower platform of the hill.

Ten years ago, in Portugal, ditched enclosures were steel just settlements. It was in that context that Torrão was first published. But the evident proximity and relation to megalithic structures led the authors to consider the importance of symbolic meanings and ritual practices as main questions to put to the site in future research. Identity and ancestors were issues that emerged in the text at the end.

Today, facing the recent data and the different theoretical approaches, Torrão is a striking example of the limitations (not to say inaccuracy) of the undemanding interpretation of a significant number of these complex sites as simple fortified settlements (in a village sense).