0188 - The importance of gates

Gates (or doors) are extraordinary important in any architecture or space organization. Being a building (with gates or doors), being a landscape (with its locals of passage that tradition preserved as “Portelas”, a Latin word, or “Alvalade”, an Arab one). They are that specific point where people cross borders between different meaningful scenarios, places of transition, elements of orientation for pathways and mental reference in construction of space, places to be defended or to be decorated or monumentalized. They are so in the present and they were so in the past. 

To ditched enclosures gates are a special issue, for they can provide us with important information about the ideological background that informed the construction of these sites. Namely, the gates show, in several cases, in Portugal as in Europe, that these enclosures were built with astronomic specific orientations, where gates played an important role: they are facing important astronomic events, like the solstices or equinoxes.

We do not have in Portugal many enclosures where we have information about the gates. We have that information for Perdigões, for the sites of the project of geophysics that I developed in the context of my NIA-ERA activity, for Santa Vitória, Outeiro Alto 2 and for a section of Alcalar. I presented some of the architecture of those gates in an earlier post, where the above image was posted.

Recintos de Bela Vista 5

Recently, in Senhora da Alegria was excavated another strange gate (posted here) and after, in Bela Vista 5, three new gates could be recorded. And although this is a latter enclosure, built in the last quarter of the 3rd millennium, it seems to use gates in a way that we can track to earlier moments in Chalcolithic: one is orientated to the sunset in the equinoxes, and the two others are orientated to Summer solstice. And one has a semicircular development by the outside (the “pinças de carangueijo”) similar to several solutions we can observe in Perdigões, Moreiros 2 or Xancra, but at the same time different: coming out of the ditch before the entrance interruption, it stops exactly where the gate begins, not blocking a front entrance or visibility and does not create a lateral entrance as it happens in the other quoted examples.

It’s a clear example that these outside elements of gates respond to intentions that are not easy to understand in their specific motivations. 

0187 - Castro de Santiago also at the museum

Castro de Santiago walled enclosure was the first site I excavated in Fornos de Algodres, from 1988 to 1996 and in 2006. As Fraga da Pena, the site is displayed in the local archaeological museum. Here are the posters that can be seen there.

I call your attention to the last one. To a specific situation, where Santiago is an interesting case: the presence of all “chaine operatoire” for the production, use and reuse of polished stone tools.

0186 – Fraga da Pena in the museum

These are the posters referring Fraga da Pena presented at the small museum of archaeology in Fornos de Algodres, the municipality of the site.

There, some archaeological materials from this walled enclosure are shown and the architecture of the site is explained.

0185 – “Structured depositions” in pits and ditches

Porto Torrão ditched enclosure. Exacavation of ERA Arqueologia in 2002 (Valera & Filipe, 2004)

This is an issue present in every ditched enclosure, not only related to the ditch fillings, but also to the pit ones.

There, we can frequently find totally articulated bodies, articulated parts of bodies or scattered bones of animals (or humans). The question, for some time now is always the same: “Is it ritual or rubbish?” (Hill, 1996)

An example is the depositions of some animal bones in a pit between two ditches at Porto Torrão (Valera & Filipe, 2004). There some jaws of different animals and part of a horse limb in anatomical connection were recorded between several small stones. “Is it ritual or rubbish?”

Porto Torrão ditched enclosure. Exacavation of ERA Arqueologia in 2002 (Valera & Filipe, 2004)

The problem here is the traditional difficulty of dealing with human intention in Prehistoric Archaeology and the debate around the expression “structured depositions”.

This expression has been used to fill a semantic emptiness that results from the critics to the use of the modern concept of garbage applied to these contexts. That criticism is supported in the idea that what is today not sacred and understood as waste in a mechanical negligible way, without meaning, might, in different social contexts be of profound significance. Then, structure deposition is a concept that emerges to avoid an impetuous projection of modern reference systems to the past, allowing other reasons to emerge. Nevertheless, as Olsen (2000) stresses, it tells us little about those reasons.

The questions remains; what means an articulated limb of a horse in a pit, associated to two jaws (of a pig and of a possible sheep)?

Recently, taking into consideration the association of animal limbs to human funerary contexts, I and a colleague argued around a possible answer (Valera & Costa, in press):  

“Because of these particular ontological frames, archaeology should pay equal attention to animal remains as it does to human remains in archaeological survey (Olsen 2000): orientation, position, represented parts of the body, conditions of those parts, individual attributes (e.g. age, gender, size, pathologies) and contextual associations. Only then will it be possible to detect patterns that allow us a glimpse into their world view that are not restricted to simple economics.

In this context the abundance of limbs or parts of limbs stresses the importance of segmentation, also present in practices involving human bodies, certain categories of artefacts and even the communities, so appropriately called segmentary societies.  Segmentation seems to be a social strategy of significant importance to societies in Recent Prehistory (Valera 2010).

The problem of segmentation is related to the problem of the relation between the part and the whole, and to the different value attributed to the degrees of physical integrality developed in different mental frames. As J. Chapman (Chapman 2000; Chapman & Gaydarska 2007) argued for the fragments of artefacts, we consider that the part and the whole may assume the same symbolic role (through an ontological parity), allowing that the part, by participating of the essence of the whole, to play the social role of maintaining connection between people or between people and places or events. When a part is present, that does not necessarily mean the occurrence of post depositional activities that disordered the original context. On contrary, we must consider the possibility of an intentional segmentation and that the part was deposited as so. But because of the principle of psychological participation, that part (a fragment of a pot, a paw of an animal) may be evocative of bonds between persons and events. For instance, to a ceremony involving the burial, to previous events that were important to the group, even to events to happen in the future or maintaining bonds to the social role and power of an object or animal.

As argued elsewhere (Valera 2008), this is a cognitive mechanism where the psychological principle of participation works allowing essential properties of the whole to be participated by the part, establishing a homology between them. It is the principle of the sacred water, where each segment represents the whole body of Christ and not a part of it. Segmentation is a structural process, where the need to segmentation and sharing and redistributing essences plays an important role in renewing and perpetuating the social and cosmological order (Fowler 2004).

In this context, the fragment of a body acquires a quite different social potential and presents challenging problems to our perception of the relations between the part and the whole, and to our concept of unity. To us, those relations are conformed by Cartesian geometry that establishes dichotomies between complete/incomplete; whole/part; orientated/disorientated, valuing and attributing meaning to the first and insignificance to the second.  This would not be the most appropriate mental frame to deal with other mental schemes, based in different categories and world views. Fragments should not be devalued, for they have the potential to establish and maintain bonds, assuming relevant social roles. “ (Valera & Costa, in press)

Bibliographic References

Chapman, J. 2000. - Fragmentation in Archaeology: people, places and broken objects in the Prehistory of South-Eastern Europe, London, Routledge.

Chapman, J. & Gaydarska, G. 2007. - Parts and wholes: fragmentation in prehistoric context Oxbow Books.

Fowler, C. 2004. - The archaeology of personhood. An anthropological approach London, Routledge.

HILL, James D. (1996), “The identification of ritual deposits of animals: a general perspective froam a specific study of ‘special animal deposits’ from the Southern English Iron Age”, (S.Anderson e K. Boyle, Eds.) Ritual treatment of human and animal remains, Oxford, Oxbow Books, p.17-32.

Olsen, S. L. 2000. -The secular and sacred roles of dogs at Botai, North Kazakhstan Crockford, S. (ed) Dogs through time: an archaeological perspective Oxford, Bar International Series : 71-92.

Valera, A. C. 2008 - Mapeando o Cosmos. Uma abordagem cognitiva aos recintos da Pré-História Recente, ERA Arqueologia 8 Lisboa, Era Arqueologia/Colibri : 112-127.

Valera, A.C. & Costa, C. (in press), “Animal limbs in funerary contexts in southern Portugal and the segmentation problem”.

Valera A.C. & Filipe, I. (2004), "O povoado do Porto Torrão (Ferreira do Alentejo): novos dados e novas problemáticas no contexto da calcolitização do Sudoeste peninsular", Era Arqueologia, 6, Lisboa, ERA Arqueologia/Colibri, p.28-61.

0184 - Bell Beakers and ditches

Bell Beaker from ditch 2 of Porto Torrão.

This is an interesting relation to analyze. At the moment the situation is the following one.

In Portugal the smaller ditched enclosures usually don’t have bell beakers (a difference regarding the walled ones). Only the larger enclosures raveled the presence of this type of pottery. This is the case of Perdigões, Porto Torrão and even Alcalar (with an AOC fragment). In all the rest, beakers are still to be recorded. But even this statement has its exception: at Bela Vista 5 we have a “Ferradeira” grave inside the ditches, and even if this kind of assemblage is not exactly a classic beaker one, it shared enough characteristics to be considered a specific expression of the beaker phenomena.

But apart from this, the present rule is that, in ditched enclosures, decorated Bell Beaker pottery is absent except from the larger ones, where can be very well represented, as it happens in Porto Torrão.

But another interesting situation occurs in Alentejo. As I stressed before (Valera e Rebuge, 2011), we can find beakers in several small open sites or walled enclosures in Alentejo, such as Monte do Tosco, Porto das Carretas, Miguens 3, Outeiro de São Bernardo, Barrada do Grilo, etc. But in all cases the beaker style tends to be exclusively monothematic: we have International style (for instance Porto das Carretas) or geometric combed style (for instance Barrada do Grilo) or incised style (for instance Monte do Tosco).

In the large enclosures, however, we have them all. In Porto Torrão, in Perdigões, but also in the near Spanish ones, like Pijotilla.

What does this exactly means?

Some written opinions about Iberian ditched enclosures support the idea that they were no longer built during the late third millennium. But the data is say otherwise.  Not just Bela Vista 5 was built in the last quarter of that millennia (although it is a “Ferradeira” context), but ditch two of Porto Torrão has beaker pottery in the lower layers and the outside ditch of Perdigões is dated from the third quarter of the millennia, clearly in a beaker phase, and have some beaker pottery in its upper half stratigraphy. So, in beaker times some ditches in large complex enclosures might have been opened and were surly active during the second half of the millennia. It is not like the reoccupations of abandoned chalcolithic sites in ruins, like it happens in the walled enclosures of Monte do Tosco or Porto das Carretas, where the walls were not rebuilt, only stone huts were raised and the area reoccupied is much smaller. On the contrary, something was happening in these large enclosures that show they continued active with the same general social meaning during the Late Chalcolithic. That is exactly what we can see at Perdigões, with the outside ditch being dated from this period but respecting the order of the previous enclosures and the organization of space and landscape, reusing older tombs with similar procedures and occupying (and respecting) the amphitheatre were the site was meant to be.  

It seems that what was happening in large ditched enclosures in the second half of the third millennium was different from what was happening in smaller sites, ditched, walled or open.

But this is based on the data we have at the moment. And, as recent times have been showing, everything can change in a “blink of an eye” in Alentejo.

References: 

Valera, A.C. e Rebuge, J. (2011), "O Campaniforme no Alentejo: contextos e circulação. Um breve balanço.", Arqueologia do norte alentejano. Comunicações das 3as Jornadas, CMF, p.111-121

0183 - Two years of Portuguese Prehistoric Enclosures (PPE)

Today this blog reaches the age of two years. And here is, to commemorate, a possible new ditch enclosure (seen in two different worked satellite images), just detected yesterday.

During 182 posts I tried to display information and ideas about the Portuguese walled and ditched enclosures to a large audience, national and international. Old and recent data, problems and perspectives, many issues were presented here. And the recent new developments were shared almost live.

The reached audience is not astonishing, but it is interesting: almost 44000 visits in two years, an average of 22000 a year, more than 1800 visits a month and about 60 per day. Not entirely bad for such a specific theme, unknown to the general public. 

One of the goals was to make available information about PPE to an international audience. The statistics say that half of the visits were from Portugal and the other half was from foreign countries. So, even that is not too bad. Here are the top ten countries where visitors came from:

Portugal 21543 United States   6140 Spain   4352 Russia   1503 United Kingdom   1452 Germany     925 France     827 Brazil     328 Ukraine     184 Holland     174

In face of this, I think Portuguese enclosures and their research is a little beet more known outside Portuguese borders. And, I believe, to the surprise of some.

So I feel stimulated to continue. The only absolute failure was my inability to bring more Portuguese archaeologists to collaborate in this initiative, as the “wish to enclose you” statement aimed. The comments are also few. However, these circumstances are not quite surprising, since the Portuguese archaeology always had a difficult relationship with the need of displaying knowledge to the general public (or even to a specialized one). So, I have to work a little beet more this area in the next few years.

Nevertheless, the blog goes into its third year “in shape”. And the months to come until the end of this year are quite promising, with expected new information and publications and so much to debate about these sites. I try to continue to make an echo of that in this page.

And thanks to the regular and irregular visitors. 

0182 - Olelas walled enclosure

Olelas plan, after Gonçalves, 1997.

Location: Sintra municipality, Lisbon, Estremadura, Central Portugal.
Chronology: Chalcolithic
Bibliographic references: Serrão & Vicente, 1958; 1959; Gonçalves, 1997; Sousa, 2010.

The quite small Olelas walled enclosure is one of the most interesting enclosures of the Portuguese Estremadura, although it is also one of the most problematic regarding the quality of its information.

It was discovered in the XIX century, but the excavation started only in the fifties of the XX century. Then, two circular stone structures were identified and, based on the material, interpreted as funerary monuments: they provide artifacts that were associated to the sacred dimension of life and some human remains. But some stone walls between these structures were also identified and that raised an ambiguous position of the excavators between the settlement and the funerary interpretation, giving a certain privilege to the symbolic and sacred side of the equation.

Later, in the late eighties/early nineties, new excavations were developed there, a more complete plan published, some radiocarbon dates obtained and the “fortified settlement” interpretation established.

Since then, Olelas has been just so: a fortified settlement, just like so many others in the region.

However, I think it would be interesting to come back to Olelas with some new questions in mind, supported in different theoretical backgrounds. 

The material collected in Olelas shows at least two previous moments of occupation before the wall was built. One from Early Neolithic and another from Late Neolithic. The walls and the three circular structures (I wander if they can be interpreted as Boussargues – see here) were presumably built in the third millennium (the radiocarbon dating doesn’t specifically date the construction of these structures), so we do not know exactly when they were built. There are some decorated pottery of “folha de Ácacia” in small numbers and more numerous assemblages of bell beaker pottery (Sousa, 2010). This means that the walled structures and towers might have been built in a latter phase inside Chalcolithic and not necessarily in the earlier phases of the millennium. I mean, although we have previous occupations (even in Chalcolithic), the enclosure itself might be relatively late.

It is a small enclosure, only of 0,1 ha, defined by the wall structures and by a natural cliff (just like Liceia, but much, much smaller). And it reminds me a lot Fraga da Pena, also defined by a wall with bastions in one side and a natural feature by the other, also very, very small, built in the late third millennium and also with a dominant beaker occupation. At Olelas, the size, the presence of specific exceptional materials, the presence of human remains, the preponderance of bell beaker pottery, and all of these taken in relation suggests a context similar to Fraga da Pena, which clearly isn’t a fortified village.

It is clear now in Portugal that enclosures were diversified contexts, that they did not all perform the same social roles or respond all to the same social needs. I suspect that the available poor information of Olelas is telling us that this particular site cannot be just submitted to an homology with other larger walled enclosures of the region. But it is just a suspicion, based on the theoretical frames and empirical data that show the diversity of these sites and their cosmological bonds.

The site should be revisited, but with new theoretical frameworks that allow confrontation of a diversity of possible interpretations. 

0181 – Luz 20 ditched enclosure

Location: Mourão municipality, Évora district, Alentejo, South Portugal.
Chronology: Chalcolithic
Bibliographic references: Valera, 2006; Becker & Valera, 2012.

Surveyed by Era company in 2004, in the context of the construction of Alqueva dam, Luz 20 is a double ditched enclosure with stone structures inside. Those works will be published next month included in a monographic study of several interventions done there in the same process.

Later, in 2010, it was submitted to geophysical survey (caesium magnetometry) in the context of NIA’s research project “Plans of ditched enclosures and Neolithic cosmologies: a landscape, archaeoastronomical and geophysical approach” financed by Calouste Gulbenkian Foudation.

The results confirmed the existence of the two ditched enclosures, of circular and concentric tendency, several circular pits and a large perfectly circular chamber of a possible tholoi structure.

Above is the magnetogram with the survey areas overlaid, showing the inside ditch and part of the outside, matching the areas were they were identified in the archaeological excavation.

However, in Portugal, geophysics continues not to be use as a regular tool in these kinds of infrastructure projects.  And they keep bumping into enclosures.

0180 – Perdigões – Sertor I

This is a detail of the magnetogram of Perdigões enclosure, focused on Sector I, located in an intermediate area of the site, with the highlight of the sinuous ditches 3 (the outside one) and 4 (the inside one) and with the plan of the survey done in the area in 2007 and 2008. There, sections were made in the two ditches and an assemblage of pits were identified and excavated.

Radiocarbon dating revealed (in coherence with the material culture) that both ditches belong to Chalcolithic, but also that the outside one (Ditch 3) was probably open earlier than the inside one (Ditch 4). When Ditch 4 started to be filled, Ditch 3 was already partially, but not completely, filled. They date from the second quarter and middle 3rd millennium BC.

The fillings reveal structure depositions of stones, pottery, faunal and human remains in the bottom half parts of the ditches and a change of the filling processes in the upper levels. These filling processes, their nature and material present,  the sinuous design of the ditches, their proximity and the fact that the inside one was open later but so near to the earlier outside one and when it was still not totally filled, all point to intentional human practices of structured depositions inside ditches, at least in their bottom half. 

The pits are in general also Chalcolithic, except the pink ones in the plan. Those have primary funerary human depositions from Late Neolithic (second half of the 4th / beginning of the 3rd millennium BC)

Several papers have already been published referring to these contexts:

COELHO, Manuela (2008), “A fauna malacológica proveniente do Sector I do recinto calcolítico dos Perdigões”, Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património, 3, Lisboa, NIA-ERA, p.35-40. 

COSTA, Cláudia (2010), "Os restos faunísticos de animais vertebrados do Sector I dos Perdigões (fossas e fossos 3 e 4)", Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património, 6, Lisboa, NIA-ERA Arqueologia, p.53-74.

COSTA, C. (2010) – Os restos faunísticos de animais vertebrados do sector I dos Perdigões (Fossos 3 e 4 e Fossas)” Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património, 6, pp.53-74.

COSTA, C. (2010) – “Problemática do enchimento dos Fossos 3 e 4 (sector I) dos Perdigões (Reguengos de Monsaraz) com base da análise estratigráfica dos restos faunísticos”, BETTENCOURT, A. M. S., ALVES, M. I. C. e MONTEIRO-RODRIGUES, S. (eds.), Variações Paleoambientais e Evolução Antrópica no Quaternário do Ocidente Peninsular/Palaeoenvironmental Changes and Anthropization in the Quaternary of Western Iberia, Braga, 2010, pp. 113-124.

GODINHO, Ricardo (2008), “Deposições funerárias em fossa nos Perdigões: dados antropológicos do Sector I”, Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património, 3, Lisboa, NIA-ERA, p.29-34. 

MARTA-MORENO, G. e CABAÇO, N. (2009), “Restos faunísticos em contexto funerário: fossas 7 e 11 dos Perdigões (Reguengos de Monsaraz)”, Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património, 4, Lisboa, NIA-Era Arqueologia, p.11-14

VALERA, António Carlos (2008), “Intervenção arqueológica de 2007 no interior do recinto pré-histórico dos Perdigões (Reguengos de Monsaraz)”, Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património, 1, NIA-ERA, p. 15-22. 

VALERA, António Carlos (2008), “O recinto calcolítico dos Perdigões: fossos e fossas do Sector I.”, Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património, 3, Lisboa, NIA-ERA, p.19-27. 

VALERA, António Carlos e GODINHO, Ricardo (2009), "A gestão da morte nos Perdigões (Reguengos de Monsaraz): novos dados, novos problemas", Estudos Arqueológicos de Oeiras, 17, Oeiras, Câmara Municipal, p.371-387.

0179 - Ditch Sections

Here are some ditch sections from Portuguese enclosures. Diversity is the word. Diversity of shapes and of sizes. Even in the same site. Even in the same ditch.

Image taken from Valera, A.C. (in press), “Recintos de fossos da Pré-História Recente em Portugal: investigação, discursos, salvaguarda e divulgação”, Almadan, 18, CAA.

0178 – Adapting and incorporating

That seems to be a significant difference between walled and ditched enclosures in Portugal.

Tor in the top of a hill used to built Castro de Santiago during Chalcolithic

Naturally, as argued before (for instance here), no building is performed in an insignificant space. Everything built is in dialogue with a local landscape, with its meanings, visibilities, resources, particularities. And all of those previous conditions are, in one way or another, incorporated in the building.

But when we compare walled and ditched enclosures we can observe that the former tend to present a great variety of forms of adaptation and incorporation of previous elements of the landscape, while the ditched enclosures mainly reflect a dialogue with topography, geology and visibility conditions.

Rocks, tors or cliffs, are usually incorporated as part of the structures that enclose. Although in other parts of Europe we can see that also in ditched enclosures (like the French “enceinte à éperon”), so far those solutions were not identified in Portuguese ditched enclosures.

Large wall from rock to rock that defines the inner enclosure at Castro de Santiago.

In terms of the architectonic features, walled enclosures seem to use the available natural conditions in a different way.  Perhaps one of the reasons is that the design, the layout, was less significant than the ones presented by ditched enclosures and answered to different goals.

Plan of the several walled structures that, together with the previous rocks, define Castro de Santiago enclosure.

0177 – Back to Senhora da Alegria

To show an image of a Middle Neolithic ditch that was sampled for pollen analysis. It belongs to a phase of occupation that was dated to the second quarter of the fourth millennium BC.
An intervention of Omniknos company.

0176 – Monte da Contenda sinuous ditched enclosure

Location: Arronches municipality, Portalegre district, South Portugal)
Chronology: Chalcolithic  (and Neolithic ?)

Bibliographic references: Unpublished.

Discovered on Google Earth and confirmed in the context of the project: “Plans of ditched enclosures and Neolithic cosmologies - 2" developed by NIA-ERA. It has at least three concentric sinuous ditches. A first publication will be done this year.

0175 - Looks like a new sinuous one

Another "flower" ditched enclosure in Alentejo. It is spring after all.

0174 – Displaying recent information

In the last few months, in the context of the NIA’s project “Plans of ditched enclosures and Neolithic cosmologies: an approach through landscape, archaeoastronomy and geophysics – 2” (recently renewed) several new ditched enclosures have been identified through Google Earth. I have been noticing some of those discoveries in this blog. And here is another one, from Reguengos de Monsaraz municipality.

It is now time for starting to publish some of the information already collected. So, a poster will be presented at the congress of the Portuguese Association of Archaeologists in November (published in the proceedings) with the title “New ditched enclosures in South Portugal: Google Earth was a tool for a systematic prospection” (by António Valera & Tiago do Pereiro) and a paper will be presented at the same meeting regarding the “Chronology of Recent Prehistory ditched enclosures in Portugal (by António Valera). In the journal Almadan, to be edited next July, there will be a synthesis paper on Portuguese ditched enclosures: “Ditched enclosures of Portuguese Recent Prehistory: research, discourses, preservation and public disclosure” (by António Valera).

0173 – Why are they where they are?

The huge tor of Fraga da Pena used to built a double enclosure in the late third millennium BC. Here seen from the valley.

The approach to Architecture that interests me is based on an anthropological perspective of space, where, in human construction, natural and artificial are cast, as also proposed by ecological approaches. Thinking architectures is thinking their contexts, the global social environment from which they emerge and simultaneously help to fabricate: sets of actions, meanings and materiality through which the human dwelling of time and space occurs. It reflects experiences and perceptions of space; it is relative to technological stages and options; satisfies specific practical needs while expresses and acts over ascetics, ideologies and current social relations; functions as a communication device of explicit and implicit meanings.

It does so through the physical structures but also through the ways space is organized and through associated activities. Corresponds to the construction of active scenarios, conditioned (because they transport tradition and respond to social needs) and conditioning (because they actively interfere in social relations, enabling and conforming them), in the context of human agency in a given time and space.

            Architecture inevitably involves a space organization through the imposing of meanings and by doing so goes further than the simple notions of occupation and construction. Furthermore, it deals in a meaningful way with forms but also with the emptiness, with the positive and with the negative, with the added features but also with the previous categorized “natural” elements of a given space.

In this sense, as a process of building and organizing meaningful spaces, Architecture is not linked, in a restrictive way, to the human material construction. 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. When building Man tends to use these previous features with their symbolic meanings and associated experiences, incorporating them as architectonic elements in the space organization.

There is no architecture made over an empty and insignificant neutral space. To understand a “building” implies to understand the previous meaningful place where it was built.  Being that a granitic tor (as Fraga da Pena), a natural amphitheatre (as Perdigões) or the particular place where stands the modern Centro Cultural de Belém (in Lisbon). 

0172 – Linear versus sinuous

This is the north part of the enclosure of Salvada. As is clearly seen, there is a linear outside ditch and a sinuous one by the inside, with a quite regular lobular pattern (like in Xancra, Santa Vitória or Outeiro Alto 2).

How to interpret this design? The sinuous well patterned ditch implies a multiplication (more than the double) of the effort to open the ditch. And what functional purpose can we detect in that design and effort? Certainly, those that once have seen bastions in these semicircular shapes will not suggest that we have a sequence of bastions side by side, not being able to have the function of a bastion. It would be an absurd proposition, as it would be to talk about water canals.

No, this design has to be explain by the ideological dimension of Architecture and sociology of space and to approach that we have to be well supplied of social theory (of sociological, psychological, anthropological and philosophical origin), or we only be able, with the linear minds of the “axiomatic obvious”, to tell linear old stories perpetuated by lineages of members of the “definite discourse”.

0171 – Monte do Tosco walled enclosure

Location: (Mourão municipality, Évora district, Alentejo, South Portugal)

Chronology: Chalcolithic / Early Bronze Age
Bibliographic references: Valera, 2000; 2007.

Monte do Tosco walled enclosure is located in the top of a hill, over the Alcarrache river, and was excavated twelve years ago by Era Arqueologia in the context of the mitigation of the impacts of the construction of the Alqueva dam.

 It is a settlement surrounded by a stone wall and an inside stone platform. At least two hut stone structures were identified. These occupation and structures can be ascribed to a plain chalcolithic chronology (first half of the 3rd millennium BC).

Later, the site was reoccupied in Late Chalcolithic / Early Bronze Age, with the construction of a circular stone hut, where several beaker shards and metal tools were collected.

0170 - Poster on Moreiros 2

Poster presented to the IX Iberian Congress of Archaeometry. Lisbon, 2011.

0169 – Ditches and Funerary Practices

Ditch and entrances to hypogea crypts in the north wall.

At Carrascal 2, near Porto Torrão complex of enclosures, a chalcolithic ditch was partially excavated by ERA Arqueologia S.A. and raveled an uncommon situation.  

The ditch, with 2 meters deep and about 4 meters wide, presented a base sectioned in rectangular shapes with a fireplace and in the north side a sequence of hypogea, at least two of them with access through entrances excavated from the side wall of the ditch.

One of the entrances was close by an agglomeration of stones and another by a schist slab. The first third of the filling of the ditch revealed several layers of pavements of circulation, revealing that the ditch functioned as an access atrium to the hypogea.

Over the last pavement, two depositions of human cremation remains were recorded, demonstrating the importance of this specific funerary practice in the 3^rd millennium C, just like is being corroborated in Perdigões enclosure.

This kind of articulation of ditches and funerary crypts is new in Iberian Chalcolithic, but shows how diversified practices and structures related to death can be in this period, namely in the areas of the large complexes of ditched enclosures.

A preliminary paper on this context (still in press) can be obtained here

Bottom of the ditch and sequence of circulation pavements with the detail of a deposition of a shell at the entrance of the central hypogeum.

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.  

0167 – Enclosures map updated

The map of enclosures was updated (see the respective page).

Here you have a window over the South Alentejo region, where a significant concentration of ditched enclosures is quite innovative.