Alcalar

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Alcalar 7 during the excavation
Drawing of the tomb of Tholos

Alcalar , in the south of Portugal (district: Faro , Concelho Portimão , Freguesia: Mexilhoeira Grande ), is the largest Copper Age settlement chamber in the Algarve . Alcalar is on the national road (Estrada Nacional) EN 532.

In the 19th century the place was called Alcalá, also with Georg and Vera Leisner .

In the center of the hill is the settlement surrounded by several ditches. This includes a necropolis made up of 14-16 previously known burial mounds, some of which are megalithic structures in the narrower sense, and some of them are domed graves . This large settlement, which can be understood as the center of a territory that lay between the Serra de Monchique mountains in the north and the sea in the south and the valleys of the Arão , Farelo and Torre rivers , was surrounded by smaller settlements. So far, five are known, in the north near Monte Canelas, in the south-west near Poio, in the south-east near Freiras, and in the east Amoreira and Mosqueiro. South of Amoreira there is another burial ground at Monte Velho and east of Poio two more burial mounds are known.

Research history

In 1880, Antonio José Nunes da Gloria, pastor in Mexilhoeira Grande, who was also a painter and sculptor after Estacio da Veiga, discovered the first grave monument, which was a megalithic grave in the narrower sense. He drew a fairly precise plan of it and thus interested the Portuguese archaeologist Sebastião Philippes Martins Estacio da Veiga for the site, who examined monuments 2 to 7 and published them including the grave recorded by Nunes da Gloria. In 1903, Joaquim Pereira Jardim from Figueira da Foz discovered another monument about 300 m west of the previously known graves and a little later near Monument 7 a second. These two monuments 8 and 9, excavated by him for the Archaeological Society of Figueira (Sociedade Archeologica da Figueira), were published a year later by his friend António dos Santos Rocha , a doctor and archaeologist, also from Figueira da Foz. Another three tombs excavated by J. Pereira Jardim form another necropolis near Monte Velho. In 1930 Georg and Vera Leisner visited the necropolis and included it in their megalithic tomb corpus, mainly because of the old publications. Three years later, José Formosinho started a project to conserve the Alcalar necropolis. He discovered three other graves near Alcalar, to which he assigned the numbers 8 to 10, presumably in ignorance of the investigations by J. Pereira Jardim, but which are now listed under the numbers 11 to 13. In addition, as can be seen from another publication, he is said to have discovered two more burial mounds. Finally, Georg and Vera Leisner published all of the previously known finds from the museums in Lisbon, Figueira da Foz and Lagos in their megalithic tomb corpus. Only in 1975 and 1982 were two parcels, where monuments 7 and 1 to 4 are located, acquired and fenced in by the state.

In 1975, independently of one another, the two archaeologists José Arnaud and Teresa Gamito as well as Carlos Tavares da Silva and Joaquina Soares discovered the large hilltop settlement to which the necropolis of monuments 1 to 15 (perhaps with the exception of 12 and 13?) belonged to. In 1979 J. Arnaud and T. Gamito carried out the first small excavation campaign on this settlement site, which unfortunately was not continued. It was not until 1982 that a new, large-scale project began by the Portuguese Monument Authority (then IPPC), initially under the direction of Rui Parreira, and later continued by him together with Elena Morán. The aim of this project was initially to make monument 7 a museum, which today, in its restored condition, is accessible to the general public. The project was later expanded to include the exploration of the entire territory dominated by the Copper Age hillside settlement of Alcalr. In a modern museum room on site (Centro de Acolhimento e Interpretação dos Monumentos Megálitos de Alcalar) you can find out more about the Copper Age necropolis of Alcalar.

The Copper Age settlement of Alcalar

The associated settlement from the Iberian Copper Age was not located on the nearby high plateau until the 1970s, while the cemetery has been known to science since 1880, but had already been robbed. There are other systems in the vicinity - so the total number in the immediate vicinity increases to 29 systems.

The necropolis of Alcalar

The two oldest structures are the somewhat distant rock-domed grave of Monte Canelas and Alcalar I.

Alcalar, Monument 1

Monument 1 is a passage grave with a polygonal chamber. Chamber and passage together measure 8.5 m. It is located in a hill 36 meters in diameter. The chamber is made up of eight sandstone slabs set in a circle and inclined slightly inward. The diameter of the chamber round is 2.6 m × 2.7 m. The slightly inwardly inclined wall stones are about 0.4 m thick and 2.4 m high, with a width of about 1.6 m. In the chamber, near the left wall, a round limestone cylinder about 55 cm high was found, which, together with an elongated slab of slate with rounded ends (length: 1.7 m, width: 0.4 m), lay at an angle in the center of the chamber , was interpreted by Estacio da Veiga as an altar-like table. The chamber cover is missing, but it probably consisted of a large plate.

Monte Canelas 700 m north of Alcalar was only discovered during dredging in the 1990s and was untouched. It consists of a double chamber (one more rectangular, the other more round) with a connecting passage. The remains of more than 140 people were found here, with different concentrations, but their scientific analysis has so far only been published in Portuguese / Spanish.

From 1988 , new excavations and the restoration, which has since been completed, were carried out in the necropolis ' best preserved dome grave , Alcalar - Monument 7. The system was built in a trough-shaped depression previously carved into the rock. It has an approximately 9 m long corridor that ends in a round chamber three meters in diameter with three relatively large side niches. The whole thing was domed and covered by a two-tier cairn made of slate and limestone. The lower area was literally bricked on the outside to maintain dimensional stability. The dome is a so-called "false dome", which consists of a cantilever vault made of slate panels in a clay bond. It is based on a natural rock base. In the north side chamber (similar to Newgrange and some Andalusian structures) there was a large stone block that perhaps served as an altar.

The other systems look similar, but were far more damaged. All chambers were recognizably round - some had a side niche.

literature

  • Georg Leisner , Vera Leisner : The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The South. Roman-Germanic Research Vol. 17. Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1943, pp. 230 and 235–243.
  • Georg Leisner, Vera Leisner: The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The West. Madrid Research Vol. 1, 2nd delivery. Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1959, pp. 262-263.
  • Elena Morán, Rui Parreira: Alcalar 7. Estudo e Reabilitação de um Monumento Megalítico. Cadernos vol. 6. Ministério da Cultura, Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico, Lisboa 2004, ISBN 972-8736-29-0 .
  • Rui Parreira, Francisco Serpa: Novos dados sobre o povoamento da região de Alcalar (Portimão) no IV e III milénios a. C. In: 1st Congresso de Arqueologia Peninsular (Porto, 12-18 de Outobro de 1993) = Trabalhos de Antropologia e Etnologia Vol. 35, 3rd Sociedade Portuguesa de Antropologia e Etnologia, Porto 1995, ISSN  0304-243X , p. 233 -247. Est. I-IX.
  • AM Silva, E. Cunha: Paleopathological study of the community exhumed from the Hipogeu of Monte Canelas I (Alcalar, Portugal). In: J. Sánchez Sánchez, (Ed.): Actas do V Congreso Nacional de Paleopatologia. Alcalá la Real, Espanha 2001, pp. 353-356.
  • António dos Santos Rocha: Dolmens de Alcalar. In: Boletim da Sociedade Arqueológica de Santos Rocha 1, No. 2, 1904.
  • Thomas G. Schattner (Ed.): Archaeological guide through Portugal (= cultural history of the ancient world . Vol. 74). Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1998, ISBN 3-8053-2313-1 , pp. 197-202.
  • Sebastião Philippes Martins Estacio da Veiga: Antiguidades Monumentaes do Algarve. Tempos Prehistoricos. Paleoethnologia Vol. I. Imprensa Nacional, Lisboa 1886, pp. 213-238.
  • Sebastião Philippes Martins Estacio da Veiga: Antiguidades Monumentaes do Algarve. Tempos Prehistoricos. Paleoethnologia Vol. III. Imprensa Nacional, Lisboa 1889, pp. 123-250.
  • Abel Viana, José Formosinho, Octávio da Veiga Ferreira: Algumas notas sobre o Bronze Mediterrânico do Museu Regional de Lagos. In: Zephyrus 4. Salamanca 1953, pp. 97-117.
  • Jürgen E. Walkowitz: The megalithic syndrome. European cult sites of the Stone Age (= contributions to the prehistory and early history of Central Europe. Vol. 36). Beier & Beran, Langenweißbach 2003, ISBN 3-930036-70-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sebastião Philippes Martins Estacio da Veiga: Antiguidades Monumentaes do Algarve. Tempos Prehistoricos . Paleoethnologia Vol. III. Imprensa Nacional, Lisboa 1889. pp. 123-250
  2. ↑ Georg Leisner, Vera Leisner: The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The south . Roman-Germanic Research, Vol. 17. Berlin 1943. pp. 235–243
  3. ↑ Elena Morán; Rui Parreira: Alcalar 7. Estudo e Reabilitação de um Monumento Megalítico . Cadernos Volume 6, Lisboa 2004. p. 31
  4. ↑ Sebastião Philippes Martins Estacio da Veiga: Antiguidades Monumentaes do Algarve. Tempos Prehistoricos . Paleoethnologia Volume 1, Lisboa 1886. S. 214, Estampa II
  5. ^ A. dos Santos Rocha: Dolmens de Alcalar . In: Boletim da Sociedade Arqueológica de Santos Rocha 1, No. 2, 1904.
  6. ↑ E. Morán; R. Parreira: Alcalar 7. Estudo e Reabilitação de um Monumento Megalítico . Cadernos vol. 6. Ministério da Cultura, IPPAR, Lisboa 2004. p. 26.
  7. ↑ Georg Leisner, Vera Leisner: The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The south . Roman-Germanic Research Volume 17. Berlin 1943, pp. 230 and 235–243.
  8. ↑ A. Viana; J. Formosinho; O. da Veiga Ferreira. In: Zephyrus 4. 1953. pp. 98 ff. - E. Morán; R. Parreira: Alcalar 7. Estudo e Reabilitação de um Monumento Megalítico . Cadernos Volume 6. Ministério da Cultura, IPPAR, Lisboa 2004. p. 26.
  9. ↑ see note 7 and G. Leisner, V. Leisner: The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The west . Madrid Research Volumes 1, 2, Berlin 1959. pp. 262–263.
  10. ^ J. Morais Arnaud, T. Júdice Gamito: Povoádo Calcolítico de Alcalar. Notícia da sua identificação . In: Anais do Município de Faro, No. 8, 1978, 275-283, Figs. 1-4.
  11. ↑ E. Morán; R. Parreira: Alcalar 7. Estudo e Reabilitação de um Monumento Megalítico . Cadernos Volume 6. Ministério da Cultura, IPPAR, Lisboa 2004. pp. 28-29.
  12. ↑ Georg Leisner, Vera Leisner: The megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. The south . Roman-Germanic Research Volume 17, Berlin 1943. pp. 235–236

Coordinates: 37 ° 11 ′ 57 "  N , 8 ° 35 ′ 17"  W.