0168 – About tors used to built enclosures

Fraga da Pena (Fornos de Algodres) walled enclosure.

In an Anthropological perspective there is no undifferentiated space in human dwelling. Space is always categorized, classified, and only the ways of doing so are contingent.

Before interfere through construction, man architects the space using its elements, the experiences and perceptions that they provide and the associated meanings.

Frequently, Architecture is a simple recognition and categorization of previous natural forms that are connected to stories, myths, and transformed in active storage of memories and experiences.

In this context, the tors volume and shape might be associated to sculptures or architectures of ancient times, mythic times, ancestral or divine. We can hardly assume that, in Prehistory, these elements were taken as “natural elements”, explained by tectonic and differential erosion.  

On the contrary. They probably had associated legends that contributed to the entity of the place, making it a meaningful mark in the landscape, through which space was organized and experienced.

The building of this kind of enclosures is not just a matter of building walls using a favorable previous situation. Walls and tor are integrated in a building where the previous meaning of the natural feature, not conceived as so, certainly had a main symbolic role. The choosing of the place and the decision of building an enclosure there hardly can be understood if we do not consider the meaning and symbolic power of these (for us) natural formations. Even if we cannot precise the specificities of that meaning and power, not consider them will result in a poor interpretation and explanation, that will reflect us more than them.  

0155 – Three more confirmed

Two possible ditched enclosures detected earlier in Google Earth were confirmed in the field, together with a recent find from last week (also on satellite image). The first two are from Serpa municipality and the third from Beja, just 3,3 kilometers away from Monte das Cabeceiras 2 (which is 3,5 from Salvada).

The new site in Beja municipality: grid stones and Chalcolithic pottery were visible at the surface.

These new enclosures present a similar topographic location, on the top of smooth hills with a great visibility over the landscape, almost in all directions. But at least two of them do not have its centre in the highest point of the hill, but slightly in the beginning of one of the slopes.

Topographical location of the new site.

0144 – An amazing “twin” in Alentejo

A new large ditched enclosure was discovered through Google Earth in Alentejo. That is not particularly amazing if we consider the last few months. What is amazing is that this new enclosure seems like a “twin brother” of Salvada enclosure.

It is more or less the same size, is crossed by a stream (not exactly in the meddle like Salvada), has several ditches (at least seven), has linear and sinuous ditches in double lines (again as Salvada), like the former is located in valley depression, seems to have an important Chalcolithic occupation (like Salvada) and, most interesting, is just 3,5 km away from Salvada. It is the first time that middle sized enclosures (more than 10 ha) are so close to each other. Food for thought regarding spatial analysis and theories of site dependence based on size.

 Topographical profiles of the two sites.

0143 - Paraíso enclosure

Location: Elvas municipality, Portalegre district, Alentejo, South Portugal)
Chronology: Late Neolithic (?), Chalcolithic
Bibliographic references: Mataloto & Costeira, 2008.

The ditched enclosure of Paraíso was discovered in the context of Rescue Archaeology, related with the construction of an urban zone in the periphery of Elvas city. In the rescue excavations pit and ditch structures were identified, but no general plan of the site is available. Still without absolute chronologies, it was considered to be dating from the first half of the third millennium BC (Chalcolithic), but with the possibility of a start in the late fourth millennium (Late Neolithic).

Although no general plan is available, surface material suggest a large site, spreading to the two banks of a small stream. According to that information, the site seems to occupy a topography that makes a slight amphitheatre open to East, a topographical situations similar to Perdigões. Once again the lower areas and smooth slopes, with visibility restricted to a specific orientation (East), are chosen. Here are the profiles that show that location.

 

0141 – Topographical Profiles

I begin today a sequence (with other themes in between) of posts dedicated to enclosure’s topographies and their hermeneutic implications. I start with Perdigões, for the site is an emblematic on the issue. Perdigões is in an amphitheatre, as the two profiles (roughly N-S and W-E) show.

 

In fact, the builders of the first enclosures of Perdigões, in Late Neolithic, chose  the lower centre of this topography, where visibility was restricted in every direction except to East, in an overture with limits coinciding with the two solstice annual events.

The topography selected responded to symbolic needs, not to defensive ones. That is obvious.

And it is also obvious that the general idea was present when the later ditches defined a larger enclosure, respecting the topographical limits of the amphitheatre and orientating the gates to the two solstices.

The topographical location of Perdigões and relation with the ditched structures is one of the strong arguments in favour of a cosmological foundation of the enclosures architecture through the long life of the site.    

0069 - Topographical differences

I’m now writing the paper presented at the Rome conference, where the main issue was to compare ditched and walled enclosures in South Portugal, since they share the same general space and time.

I centred my analyses in eight aspects: tendency for architectonic separation; topographical location; dimensions; design ; architectonic dynamics and associated practices, cosmological foundation of architecture; relation to funerary practices; practice of metallurgy. Some of these items were already discussed here (dimension, presence of pits).

Today I would like to draw the attention to the topographical differences between the locations of this to kind of architectures. Those differences can be expressed as a more homogeneous location strategy for walled enclosures that prefers exclusively hill tops (or cliff edges or high rocky tors in central and north Portugal), and a more diversified location for ditched enclosures. We can find them also on hill tops (Santa Vitória, Outeiro Alto 2), but they can be in the middle of smooth slops (Xancra, Monte do Olival), in natural amphitheatres (Perdigões, Paraiso), in large valleys (Porto Torrão) or spread from small and flat hill tops, through the slops and to the lower ground (Moreiros 2).

In fact, ditched enclosures do not reveal a particular standard pattern of location. By the contrary, they relate themselves with the landscape in diverse ways, although we can observe some tendencies, like the interest of building facing east (frequently with gates astronomically orientated).

This difference between ditched and walled enclosures is just one amongst others, suggesting that, in general, they didn’t serve exactly the same purposes or, at least, that those architectures were responding and were related to specific practices that were not shared by both.