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]
[link]

Building symbols

The earthworks of Poverty Point, an ancient ritual site, with a set of concentric ditches and banks, drawing a semi-circular plan. The enclosure opens to a bend of the sinuous Mississipi River.

The Bend of the Lucefece

Location of the site


The Rocha da Mina outcrop


The stairs


The well


Depiction of a zig-zag/undulating line, on the Alqueva pannels of Retorta

Rocha da Mina (Alandroal) is a pré-roman sanctuary, eventually devoted to the celtic god Endovellicus, with some rock cut features, such as a stair, a well and an altar.
See http://www.crookscape.org/news.html


The location of this santuary, in a difficult landscape, seems tighly related to a bend of the River Lucefece.

The Bends of the Guadiana

The importance, for the prehistoric mind - in what respects the implantation of sacred sites - of the bends of the rivers, showed on two major european ritual sites (see the two previous posts), is very well exemplified on the Alqueva rock art. Actually, the most important concentrations of carvings are located close to the two major curves of the Guadiana river, called, in portuguese, respectively, the Moinho da Volta and Retorta, both refering to the acentuated bends of the river.

The Bend of the Boyne

The Bend of the Boyne is a extraordinary megalithic complex, in Ireland, the biggest concentration of megalithic art in Europe, Three main monuments (Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth), and other smaller elements, integrate this very defined megalithic landscape.

The name of the area relates to the waving course of the Boyne River.

Stonehenge settlement

Escavações em Durrington Walls, um recinto de fossos, relacionado com Stonehenge. Note-se o curso sinuoso do rio Avon, com o qual se articulam ambos através de avenidas.

O conjunto inclui Woodhenge (aqui representada uma reconstituição feita em 2005).

Veja, no National Geographic Magazine http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070130-stonehenge-video.html,

Rock cut basins

Pedra das Gamelas (Santana do Campo, Arraiolos, Central Alentejo)

The issue of rock cut basins/versus natural basins is not a new one. Here I include images of a natural outcrop with carved antropomorphs (cruciforms) on the sides and a natural basin on the top. It has been first published by Vergílio Correia (El Neolítico de Pavia, 1921). This author comments the difficulty of distinguishing natural and artifitial basins (as well as the "normal" cup marks) suggesting that the latest would have been inspired on the former.