Son Catlar

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Son Catlar Poblat de Son Catlar
Cyclops wall with passage

Cyclops wall with passage
Son Catlar (Balearic Islands)
Red pog.svg

Location in Menorca
Coordinates 39 ° 57 '14 "  N , 3 ° 52' 30"  E Coordinates: 39 ° 57 '14 "  N , 3 ° 52' 30"  E
place Ciutadella , Menorca , Balearic Islands , Spain
Emergence 2000 to 1200 BC Chr.
Dimensions 200 m
height 33  m

Son Catlar (full name Poblat de Son Catlar ) is a prehistoric settlement on the Spanish Balearic island of Menorca . Its beginnings go back to pretalayotic times. During the post-Talayotic period (550-123 BC) Son Catlar was one of the largest settlements on the island. The decay took place at the end of Roman times .

location

Son Catlar is eight kilometers south of Ciutadella and can be reached via the Camino de Torre Saura. A parking lot is available for visitors.

history

The beginnings of the settlement are in the late Bronze Age , but their heyday in the Iron Age . Between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC There was an explosive development of the settlement. Son Catlar was now one of the largest settlements on Menorca, along with Trepucó and Torre d'en Galmés . After the Roman invasion in 123 BC Parts of Son Catlar were still used as dwellings during the period in the BC and during the Islamic period .

In 1924, Francesc Hernández i Sanz carried out excavations in the area of ​​the Taula . The results were, however, just as little published as those M. L Serras and J. Flaquers who excavated a pillared room behind the northern talayot ​​in 1957. After photogrammetric recordings in 2015, Fernando Prados Martínez from the University of Alicante carried out excavations on the defensive wall a year later. A systematic excavation of the entire settlement is still pending.

On June 8, 1931, the Spanish Republic placed Son Catlar under monument protection by decree . Today the area is registered under the number RI-51-0003342 as an archaeological monument ( Monument arqueològic ).

Son Catlar is one of the 32 archaeological sites that Spain officially proposed on January 14, 2016 as " Talayotic Culture of Menorca " for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List . The World Heritage Committee postponed the application at its 41st meeting in July 2017 and requested improvements.

description

Cyclops wall with bastion
Entrance to one of the casemates

Son Catlar is the only prehistoric settlement in Menorca that has a closed, preserved Cyclopean wall made of unusually large stones that were laid as dry stone walls . The 870 meter long and up to three meter high ring wall encloses the 3.74 hectare settlement and dates from the post-Talayotic era (550 to 123 BC). Later, perhaps during the Second Punic War , but possibly not until the Roman period, several square defense towers were added. In the northeast is the only identified access, consisting of two large vertical blocks as posts, on which another stone slab lies across as a lintel . The casemates in the northwestern part of the wall are unique . On the outside of the western wall there is a monolith with anthropomorphic engravings .

Within the walls there are four talayots dating from 850 to 650 BC. Built around 500 BC and Were abandoned. In the northern talayot, which has an elliptical ground plan of 15.30 mx 13.30 m at the base, there is a room with a central column. The other talayots are circular in structure, 15 to 17 m in diameter.

View into the Taula sanctuary

In the center of the complex is the horseshoe-shaped post - Talayotic Taula sanctuary, the largest of its kind on Menorca. The capital stone of the taula , a T-shaped monument made of two large stones, fell and broke. Upright and overturned monoliths indicate radial subdivisions of the space. Immediately in front of the sanctuary there is a cistern that presumably had a ritual function.

A multitude of rectangular and semicircular buildings are still waiting to be excavated. A hall of columns ( hypostylus ) was found near the northern wall .

In the west, outside the walls, there is an artificial burial cave ( hypogeum ) from the period between 2000 and 1400 BC. A corridor 2.45 m long and 1.40 m wide leads into a chamber 5 m long and 2.80 m wide. A second hypogeum dating from the 9th to the 1st centuries BC. Is dated immediately south of the walls. Its chamber is 4.30 m long and 5.20 m long.

literature

  • Margarita Orfila Pons, Guillem Sintes Espasa, Enric Taltavull Femenías: Guía arqueológica de Menorca. Mahón 1984, ISBN 84-3982134-4

Web links

Commons : Son Catlar  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Son Catlar on the BalearsCulturalTour website, accessed on February 18, 2015
  2. ↑ a b c Resolution (PDF; 109 kB) of the Executive Council of the Island Council for the Protection of the Archaeological Site of Son Catlar of December 15, 2003, Boletín Oficial de las Islas Baleares Num. 20, February 24, 2004
  3. ^ A b Antoni Nicolau Martí, Elena Sintes Olives, Ricard Pla Boada, Albert Àlvarez Marsal: Talayotic Minorca . The prehistory of the island. Triangle Books, Sant Lluís 2015, ISBN 978-84-8478-640-5 , pp. 276 (English).
  4. ↑ a b Fechadas las distintas fases de la muralla de Son Catlar en Ciutadella logro de la ultima campana de excavacion de la universidad de Alicante en Menorca , Universidad de Alicante, July 21, 2016, accessed on May 16, 2017 (Spanish)
  5. ↑ Fernando Prados, Helena Jiménez, M. José León, Andrés M. Adroher, Joan C. de Nicolás, José Javier Martínez: Menorca entre Cartago y Roma: Avance de la excavación arqueológica del proyecto modular en el poblado de Son Catlar (Ciutadella) . In: VII Jornades d'Arqueologia de les Illes Balears, Maó September 30 to October 12, 2016, pp. 153–160 (Spanish).
  6. ↑ Talayotic Culture of Minorca (PDF; 138.4 MB), Consell Insular de Menorca, January 2013, p. 45.
  7. ↑ Talayotic Culture of Minorca , on the Spanish tentative list at UNESCO (English), accessed on October 28, 2017.
  8. ↑ World Heritage Committee (Ed.): List of nominations received by February 1, 2016 and for examination by the World Heritage Committee at its 41st session (2017) . (English, unesco.org [PDF; 427 kB ]).
  9. ↑ World Heritage Committee (Ed.): Decisions adopted during the 41st session of the World Heritage Committee (Krakow, 2017) . (English, unesco.org [PDF; 4.5 MB ]).
  10. ↑ a b Information board in Son Catlar, October 6, 2015
  11. ↑ Ferran Lagarda i Mata: The archeology of Minorca on the website www.arqueoguia.com (note: select “Prehistoric Archeology”, “Villages”, “Son Catlar”).
  12. ↑ a b Tomàs Vibot: Archaeological Tour through Menorca , El Gall Editor, Pollença 2006, ISBN 978-84-96608-30-6 , p. 59f.
  13. ↑ Ferran Lagarda i Mata: The archeology of Minorca on the website www.arqueoguia.com (note: select “Prehistoric Archeology”, “Hypogeums”, “Son Catlar”).