Re-creating a monument

Inspired on the Almendres megalithic enclosure, a new monument is born in Alentejo: between Aljustrel and Odemira, the people of Tamera is recreating, with elaborated symbols carved on the stones, a comunity around a circle of stones and ideas.

Rebuilding a monument

Newgrange


Newgrange

Gavrinis


Petit Mont d'Arzon


Petit Mont d'Arzon


Table des Marchand


Table des Marchand

Restoring a megalithic monument, with its mound, is not an easy job. Newgrange (Ireland), Gravrinis, Petit Mont d'Arzon, Table des Marchand (Brittany) make us wonder about Anta Grande do Zambujeiro.

Estátuas-menires

O "menir" 2 das Lajes (Évora): monólito com cerca de 1, 70 m, evidenciando um cinto, em baixo-relevo. Estátuas-menires do Sul de França, com vários atributos antropomórficos, incluindo cintos.

Megalitismo alentejano contemporâneo

Arte rupestre e megalitismo, na parede do Café Lusitânia (o antigo Café Arcada).

O painel foi inaugurado no início de 2003, na mesma altura em que decorria em Évora, no Forum Eugénio de Almeida, um Colóquio Internacional sobre Arte Rupestre e Megalitismo (Sinais de Pedra). Por coincidência.

É curioso que o artista (António Mira) se inspirou claramente em temas da arte rupestre e do megalitismo da Europa ocidental, embora sem ter representado nenhum dos motivos alentejanos, de que actualmente, se conhece um número muito elevado (com a descoberta do Complexo Rupestre do Alqueva e o estudo das gravuras nos menires).

Outro aspecto curioso é que, a par de réplicas de gravuras, o escultor usou igualmente, como se fosse um símbolo, a planta de um grande monumento megalítico funerário (tipo Barnenez). Building symbols...

Recurrent symbols

Estranho mundo o das placas de xisto: só faltava mesmo esta...

Gonçalves, V.S. (2006)

Veja também:

Recurrent designs

Recurrent ideas

Recurrent symbols

Em tempos e espaços completamente díspares.

The hidden faces of the stones

Close to Évora, inside the Monte das Flores farm.

The hidden faces of the stones

Cup-marks on a small outcrop, close to the tallest dolmen in the world (Anta Grande do Zambujeiro). Between the cup-marks and the dolmen (and beneath this one), a neolithic settlement has been identified.

This situation ( a burial monument overlapping a former settlement site) has been proving to be very usual, in Iberia as in other areas of Europe.

Megalitismo alentejano contemporâneo

The Bend of the Raia

Close to the town of Mora (Central Alentejo) we find another cluster of pre-historic setllements and ritual sites apparently in connection with the bend of the Raia.

See

Fontainhas 2005

Mora 2006

.

Scale does matter

Pannels with hemicycles in Northumberland (UK)

The hemicycle (or horse-shoe) seems to be present, at different levels, in prehistoric carvings, buildings and landscapes.

Differently from the topographic model, which accepts the idea that some rock art motifs are like plans or maps of buildings or field limits

See http://www.rupestre.net/alps/img/fontmapp.jpg
http://www.rupestre.net/alps/img/fontmapp.jpg
http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/Projects/Chip/Chip212.htm
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521524247http://www.uf.uni-erlangen.de/felskunst/rockarch.html

we sugest that rock art motifs, buildings and specific features on the landscape, were conceived as different scales to materialize abstract symbols.

The hemicycle in the landscape is, like the bends of the rivers/serpents, often connected with important ritual prehistoric sites.

The hemicycle, open to SE, connected with the Almendres

megalithic enclosure (Alvim, 2006)

The hemicycle related with the Carnac/Locmariaquer monuments

The hemicycle (green) centering the Xerez megalithic enclosure

Building Symbols in Alentejo

Vale d'El Rei megalithic enclosure


Er-Lannic megalithic enclosures


Stonehenge megalithic enclosure

The C (or horseshoe) plan of sites like Águas Frias (or Poverty Point) is also the usual setting of megalithic enclosures, in Central Alentejo and Brittany.


Rare in the British Islands, is also displayed on the unique site of Stonehenge; this has been argued to reveal some kind of relationship between Stonehenge and the Continental Europe, on Neolithic times.

Building symbols in Alentejo

The Late Neolithic settlement of Aguas Frias, in Central Alentejo, seems to display a symbolic architectonic plan which could be interpreted as a sintesis of the same symbols displayed on the two mississipian sites showed on the last posts: the semi-circular plan of the earthworks in Poverty Point and the snake-like plan of Serpent Mound.

Águas Frias has been interpreted as a settlement site, though it showed a very unique caracteristic which gives an extra symbolic dimension to the site: it is the only known "factory" of the highly symbolic shist plaques that caracterize the deposits in the alentejan dolmens (as well as in the areas around Alentejo).

Where are the limits between a settlement and a ritual site?

Building symbols

Old plan of the Serpent Mound


The Serpent Mound



Old plan of another serpent mound




Aligator Mound


Again in the USA, in the Mississipian world, the biggest representation of an almost universal icon: the serpent.
Note that the Serpent Mound describes a hemicycle, open to a small river.


In the same general area we can find other earthworks displaying animals.

Some related links: [link]
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