Tholos from El Romeral
| Tholos de El Romeral Cueva del Romeral | |||
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 Entrance of the Tholos tomb from the southwest |
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Location in the province of Málaga |
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| Coordinates | 37 ° 2 '4 " N , 4 ° 32' 5.8" W | ||
| place | Antequera , Málaga , Andalusia , Spain | ||
| Emergence | around 2500 BC Chr. | ||
The Tholos of El Romeral (also Cueva del Romeral 'Cave of El Romeral') is a round burial mound in Andalusia . Together with the Dolmen de Menga and - de Viera , 1.7 kilometers away , it forms an important ensemble of Neolithic architecture . As dolmen of Antequera they are since 2016 a World Heritage Site of UNESCO .
location
The Tholos is located about 2.5 kilometers northeast of the city of Antequera in the province of Málaga . The burial mound is surrounded by a ring of cypress trees .
Dating
In the 20th century it was still believed that the three large stone graves in the area around Antequera, the Dolmen de Menga , the Dolmen de Viera and the Tholos de El Romeral , belonged to the same cultural epoch. In the meantime, research advocates a widely divergent dating between the first two (around 3500 to 3000 BC) and the building of El Romeral, which was built around 2500 BC. And is assigned to the culture of Los Millares in a broader sense , the center of which, however, is more than 200 kilometers further east. The main reasons are - in addition to the different stone material - the floor plans of the burial chambers, which in the Tholos of El Romeral are round, whereas in the other two buildings they are rectangular.
architecture
The grave mound (tumulus) of Tholos de El Romeral has a diameter of 68 meters. The underground tomb consists of a long corridor, the walls of which are piled up with small rubble stones and the ceilings of megalithic slabs, and - separated by a megalithic portal - two round, tholos-like chambers at its end. The total length of the tomb is 34 meters, but was originally longer.
The access is oriented to the south-southwest ( azimuth 199 °) on the Camorro de las Siete Mesas , the highest point of the Torcal de Antequera . The Tholos de El Romeral is one of the few Neolithic buildings on the Iberian Peninsula that are oriented towards the western half of the sky. Eleven of the capstones of the flat ceiling of the entrance remain. The current length of the corridor is 26.30 meters, the average width 1.50 meters and the average height 1.95 meters.
- Tholos from El Romeral
Access with walls made of small rubble stones, ceilings and portal zone made of megaliths
Basic plan
Main chamber with passage to the second chamber
"Altar stone" in the second chamber
The subsequent larger chamber is circular and has a diameter of 5.20 meters and a height of 3.75 meters. It is built in the same way as the corridor - here, however, a clearly inward protruding construction in the form of a cantilever dome can be observed, which forms a false dome and is covered at the top by a megalithic slab. The floors of the corridor and the main chamber are made of tamped earth. An opening in the wall of the larger chamber opposite the entrance, offset by 10 degrees to the north from the longitudinal axis of the grave, leads into one with a diameter of only 2.34 meters and a height of 2.40 meters, significantly smaller and around 70 Second chamber raised centimeters. Here is a kind of "altar stone"; in addition, the floor of the small room is laid out with stone slabs.
In the tholos of El Romeral, remains of bones and grave goods were found.
See also
- A reconstructed Tholos tomb , the Dolmen Granja of Toriñuelo, is located near Jerez de los Caballeros in the province of Badajoz .
Individual evidence
- ^ Antequera Dolmen Sites. UNESCO , 2015, accessed October 19, 2015 .
- ↑ Chris Chaplow: Menga, Viera and El Romeral Dolmens. www.andalucia.com, accessed October 20, 2015 .
- ↑ a b c Conjunto Arqueológico Dólmenes de Antequera. Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (Spanish)
- ^ Dolmen del Romeral. Patrimonio Inmueble de Andalucía. Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de Cultura, accessed October 21, 2015 (Spanish).
Web links
- Dolmen de El Romeral - photos, sketches + information (Spanish)
- Conjunto Arqueológico Dólmenes de Antequera. Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de Cultura (Spanish)
- El tholos de El Romeral (Antequera. Málaga) (Spanish)
- Dolmenes de Antequera. (Spanish)
