0071 - Enclosures mental images

Some Portuguese enclosures present designs that have patterns that are visually striking from above and as a whole (from an aerial picture or geophysics image, for instance). Just like, with the natural differences, the Nasca “land drawings”. But their builders and users didn´t saw those images (well, there is the question of the possible balloons in Nasca).

But, didn´t they?

Could sites like Xancra, Santa Vitória, Outeiro Alto 2, Monte do Olival or Perdigões not have a previous and spread mental image that the architecture was reproducing? In fact, we have the metal capacity of imagining and visually conceive what we actually cannot see. We built mental maps, for instance, and we can build mental plans, even without flying or drawing.

So, how really were perceived these enclosures in terms of their plans and designs? Could this perception of Xancra ever been formed in the mind of one of its builders or visitors?

0060 – Portuguese ditched enclosures at the IX CIA

A paper and two posters are being presented at the IX Congress of Iberian Archaeometry, held in Lisbon. The paper focus on the results of the project on Cosmological Foundation of Enclosures Architectures analysed through geophysical survey. The posters present the geophysical results at Xancra and Moreiros 2.
A Project of NIA-ERA, financed by Gulbenkian Foundation (that is hosting the conference).

0022 - Disclosure the enclosures

Report on Xancra´s geophysical survey published on “O Público” (click in the image to enlarge)

Although ditched enclosures are known for a long time in Europe, and in Portugal since the eighties of the XX century, the general Portuguese public ignores this kind of archaeological sites and their scientific and heritage importance. People know or heard of megalithic monuments, but they don´t have any awareness of enclosures, of their relations to megalithism, of the large sizes they may reach, of the complexity they may present, of the fascination they may have on us.
This is a problem at several levels. One of them, is that people don’t understand the need (and the costs) to preserve and study this kind of sites. They were not educated to value them, therefore they don´t value them.

So, it is the responsibility of any research project on the matter to assume its own publicity and to promote the disclosure of the produced knowledge. As someone once said, the goal of scientific knowledge is to become common sense. Only shared it gains its social relevance and be in a position to require for social value and support.

And ditched enclosures can provide us with a lot of important and attractive stories to tell about Prehistory and about ourselves. As they did in the past, they can help bringing people together around heritage value, especially in times of difficulties, where culture tends to be undervalued.

0020 - The importance of Topography

The picture presents the topographical locations of Xancra (at the top) and Monte do Oilval (at the bottom). Both are in the middle of slopes, with high ground behind. Xancra is in a smooth open slope facing east. Monte do Olival is in a more inclined one, with the hill top just in the back of the enclosure, facing northeast. The chosen topographical ground for these two enclosures is quite similar to the one selected to the cromlechs of Almendres or Vale Maria do Meio.

0019 - "Wavy ditches"

The number of known ditched enclosures in South Portugal has been increasing in the last years, being almost thirty now. Between them, several present a peculiar design that has been designated by “sinuous ditches”. This peculiar configuration didn’t raise the necessary attention to its interpretation, as a result of a functional attribution that doesn’t question the ideological foundations of architecture.

In a recent paper (Valera, in print 2010) I presented a first attempt to organize these particular designs in four basic categories according to integral or almost integral plans of ditches:

A. Sequences of regular and aggregated lobes (1. Santa Vitória; 2. Outeiro Alto 2; 3. Xancra); B. Sequences of separated regular lobes (4. Moreiros 2; 5. Águas Frias); C. Regular wavy (6. Juromenha 1; 7. Perdigões); D. Irregular wavy (8. Águas Frias; 9. Perdigões).

This morphological diversity is certainly meaningful and the traditional association to the design of walls with bastions, if arguable for some of these categories (such as the B. or even D.), is clearly unacceptable for the A. and C.. Explanations for the particular designs like the ones in Xancra, Santa Vitória or Outeiro Alto, that so far represent a specificity of the middle Portuguese Guadiana basin, need to be searched elsewhere. In the quoted paper I argued that some answers can be found in the ideological connotation of architecture, namely in its cosmological foundation. Locations, topography, astronomic orientation, landscape connections and design, all talk about architectures that are impregnated by cosmologic senses, without which these sites cannot be comprehended.

Reference:
Valera, António Carlos (in print 2010), “Fossos sinuosos na Pré-História Recente do Sul de Portugal: ensaio de análise crítica”, Actas do V Encontro de Arqueologia do SW Peninsular.

0015 - Modular architectures ?

Has been recently suggested (Diaz-del-Rio, 2008) that some structures of Iberian chalcolithic walled enclosures may have a construction organized by modules. It is argued that the main walls (and not just re-buildings or re-enforcements) might have been built in sequences in time and not in short and continuous periods (building at once; building phase). Each module would be a specific project of a specific part of the community and related to the capacity of work and resources mobilization present at each time. The final building would be an aggregation of segmented projects, expressing the social organization of the community itself. As Iberian examples that suggest this sort of modular building Los Millares (south Spain) and Castanheiro do Vento (north Portugal) were presented .


(in Diáz-del-Rio, 2008, adapted)

In fact, this kind of situation has been also observed in ditched enclosures. In Germany, at Herxheim, the final image of a ditch seems to be the result of a sequence of elongated and overlapping pits. The same was reported to the Portuguese enclosure of Salgada, where the ditch was built in sections (see here).

In recent papers on sinuous ditches (Valera, in print) and on the Xancra’s geophysics (Valera & Becker, 2011), I analysed the image of Xancra and question if the same situation is not present, since similar modules (to the ones proposed to Castanehiro do Vento and Los Millares walls) are apparently suggested by the image.


(in Valera & Becker, 2011)

Naturally, this is not just a matter of building strategies. It has strong implications in the theoretical models we generate to these communities. If huge architectonic structures are built in smaller segments through time, requiring less labour mobilization and control, less logistics, they became accessible to smaller segmentary communities of parental bases, that don´t have a developed and strong social hierarchy. If so, we must carefully question how large constructions are, in fact, built and assume that heavy architecture can no longer be use uncritically as undisputed evidence of a highly social and political complexity.

On the other hand, it draws attention to the problem that many constructions are a result of a long process of construction and use, and that there is not an evident gap in time between the “building phase” and the “using phase”: architectures as living processes of construction.

Bibliography
DIÁZ-DEL-RIO, Pedro (2008), “El context social de las agregaciones de población durante el Calcolítico Peninsular”, ERA Arqueologia, 8, Lisboa, Era-Arqueologia / Colibri, p.128-137.
ORSCHIEDT, Jörg e HAIDLE, Miriam Noël (2006), “The LBK enclosure of Herxheim. Theatre of war or ritual centre? References from osteoarchaeological investigations”, Journal of Conflict Archaeology, 2, p.153-167.
VALERA, A.C. e BECKER, H. (2011), “Cosmologia e recintos de fossos da Pré-História Recente: resultados da prospecção geofísica em Xancra (Cuba, Beja)”, Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património, 7, Lisboa, NIA-ERA Arqueologia, p.23-32.
VALERA, António Carlos (in print), “Fossos sinuosos na Pré-História Recente do Sul de Portugal: ensaio de análise crítica”, Actas do V Encontro de Arqueologia do SW Peninsular.

0001 - Xancra Ditched Enclosure

Location: (Cuba municipality, Beja district, Alentejo, South Portugal)
Chronology: Chalcolithic (Based on surface materials)
Bibliographic references: Valera & Becker, 2011.

I start with the amazing site of Xancra. It was discovered in Google Earth and submitted to geophysical prospecting in the context of the research project ”Ditched Enclosures Plans and Neolithic Cosmologies: a landscape, archaeoastronomic and geophysical approach”, financed by the Portuguese Calouste Gulbenkian Foudation.

Its three ring enclosures have entrances aligned and orientated to Winter solstice, revealing the cosmological foundation of the design of the set of enclosures. This idea is reinforced by topographical location, since the site is in the middle of a slope (eastern orientated) and not at the top.

The number of semicircular elements that compose the ditches suggest that architecture incorporates a moon calendar, since their number is quite coincident with moon phases, days and months.