Repositório RCAAP

404 páginas

This paper is divided into three main sections: a short history of the research on the Middle and Upper Paleolithic in Portugal; a review on the methodological applications and the respective shortfalls on the study of the Portuguese Paleolithic; and a final section on the future of research on those two phases on the Portuguese Paleolithic.

The Solutrean site of Arneiro, or Olival do Arneiro, was identified by Manuel Heleno in 1942 and successively explored by him, in several intermittent campaigns of limited duration, until October 1944. It had already been the subject of a preliminary study in the seventies by Zbyszewski and collaborators. However, the authors were not aware of the contents of Manuel Heleno’s field notebooks with importante informations on the spatial distribution of materials, as a result of the ditches that were opened, as well as their typology and stratigraphy. Such elements appear essential for the framing of the results now presented, corresponding to the study of the whole collection, in the light of new morphometric and morphological criteria performed. In this way, the study of the 30 bifacial points identified and separated from the rest of the collection by O. da Veiga Ferreira, constituting to date the most important set of solutrean points from one single place of the Portuguese territory, was completed by the study of the remaining part of the original set, consisting of 391 bifacial points in different stages of execution belonging to the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia collections, of which only 51 are near the final stage of execution. The general conclusion obtained through the different analytical methodologies adopted led to the integration of this second set of pieces also in the Solutrean techno-complex. However, as there is no possibility of confronting this operative chain with another one known to be solutrean or more modern, it remains to demonstrate its true chronology.

The analysis of reference works allows us to identify three main phases in the study of subsistence practices in the Neolithic of Portugal. In a first, from the mid-nineteenth century, the “three age system” is assimilated but the issues of subsistence do not enter into the concerns of the authors (Pereira da Costa, Gabriel Pereira). Between the end of that century and the middle of the twentieth century, there was a rapid introduction of the correlation Neolithic = agriculture and pastoralism (Carlos Ribeiro, Augusto Filipe Simões), which however disappears through time. Finally, between the 1940s and 80s, V. G. Childe’s proposal for a “Neolithic revolution” does not penetrate Portuguese research; the perception that the Neolithic was essentially characterized by pastoral practices will predominate (Georg and Vera Leisner).

The archaeological occupation of the Alcobertas cave, a collective necropolis of the Serra dos Candeeiros in the “Maciço Calcário Estremenho” was characterized and dated. The two dates obtained, place the installation of the necropolis in the second quarter of the 4th millennium BC, corresponding to the full phase of the Middle Neolithic period. This conclusion is consistent with the typology of the archaeological materials, which have remained together with the anthropological set obtained, since the time of the excavation, in 1880, by António Mendes, collector of the former Geological Survey of Portugal.

The emergence and development of funerary Megalithism must have occurred during the second quarter of the 4th millennium BC, most likely within a framework of some structural and volumetric diversity, certainly far from the linear process of architectural development that has been proposed since Manuel Heleno. Indeed, this will have been a truly crucial moment in the process of neolithization, with the foundation of new landscapes and the strengthening of the process of territorialization, which will determine, as it happened again in the Middle Ages, the reappropriation of any sign of ancestry, as is patent in the passage graves overlays to significant old spaces, sometimes with burial areas.

The excavations carried out in Alto do Cidreira, Cascais, in 2007 led to the identification of a domestic unit implanted at the top of a south-facing slope, constituted by a fireplace protected from the NW winds by a possible windbreak. These two structures were located in the open air, certainly in the vicinity of a hut that was not identified during the excavation. The almost exclusive occurrence of incised beaker ceramics and from where the fine productions associated to maritime vases are completely absent has parallels in other domestic sites spread across the fertile region located along the north bank of the Tagus mouth and corresponds to the less differentiated segment of the population, whose elites, associated with fine productions, would occupy the fortified villages of the region, such as that of Leceia. This is the first evidence of a beaker workshop specialized in the preparation of artefacts identified in Portuguese territory, as indicated by the hundreds of chipping flakes from flint cores, an abundant raw material obtained in the Cretaceous formations of the surrounding region, often exhibiting heat treatment. This feature explains the existence of the identified combustion structure. To reinforce this conclusion, two sketches of artefacts were collected, which are added to the few flint instruments identified whose remarkable diversity is explained by the fact that they correspond to the set used by the specialized community that during a short period of time frequented this place.

Despite the remarkable change that Bronze societies show towards 2200 BC, with respect to the preceding Chalcolithic ones, it is importante to highlight that many novelties were really present since the Late Chalcolithic and indicate continuity. These include the location on terraced hills of difficult access, the occupation of islets and coastal headlands, the knowledge of huts with a rectangular or oval shape, individual burial, even underneath the settlements, the use of burnished black pottery and chalice shaped vessels, the diadems or the combat with javelin and halberds with the blade attached to the handle by means of rivets. Among the clearest breaks are those of an ideological nature, such as the disappearance of the eye and anthropomorphic idols, or the solar decorations on ceramics, linked to the abandonment of previous religious beliefs. As novelties it is worth mentioning the use of solid rectangular bastions and the burial in rectangular stone cists present in the Aegean. At this stage of the Early Bronze Age, Asian and hippo ivory arrived from the Levant, probably via Crete, while Argaric ships obtained African elephant ivory. A second phase began in the Middle Bronze Age around 1925 BC, and coincides with the first Minoan Old Palaces during the Middle Minoan IB and IIA, 1925/1900‑1800 BC, when the introduction of the pithoi burials took place. At that time it continued to reach the Iberian Peninsula, probably also with the intermediation of Minoan ships, hippo ivory from Levant, with a workshop at Illeta dels Banyets (Alicante), and African elephant ivory with another workshop in Fuente Álamo (Almería). In this stage the exploitation of silver increased, to a large extent from Linares‑La Carolina (Jaén), which could also be commercialized towards the Aegean. The last phase should have started with the Middle Bronze Age II, from 1825 BC onwards, contemporaneous with the beginning of the New Palaces in Crete, from Middle Minoan IIB, 1800 BC, with new imports such as the faience and amber necklace beads, perhaps Baltic, and painted frescoes appear at La Almoloya (Murcia) around 1650 BC. In the Southeast, copper production increased in Peñalosa (Jaén), even circulating as ingots, while alluvial tin, and perhaps alluvial gold, must have started to come from the Atlantic façade, as tin‑bronzes increasing, which could also be exchanged for products of the Eastern Mediterranean. The most logical option for these contacts with Crete or the Levant would be the model of the ships of Tarshish, a three‑year expedition, which provided certain valuable raw materials with some regularity.

By focusing on the Bronze Age and, particularly, on its final stage, the author makes a journey through the research carried on in Portugal in the last 140 years. Having the thread of time as a guiding ballast, but not limited by its linearity, the traveled itinerary stops in some aspects selected by various criteria, which are commented on or discussed. It is not a synthesis about the knowledge of that period, but a text that summons data through its biographies and plural mobility, aiming at understanding and the way it was built.

The data which has been retrieved in the past two decades in the Portuguese territory have confirmed the relatively early date of the arrival of Phoenician communities in the western coasts of the Iberian Peninsula. Groups of western Phoenicians, probably originating in the áreas of Cádiz and Málaga, settled surely within the late second half of the eighth century b.c.e. in sites located first in the estuary of the Tagus and afterwards in those of the Mondego, Sado, Guadiana and Gilão. In the first space (the Tagus estuary), the density of sites is significant, and every indication suggests those sites functioned as a network following coordination models. Given the fact that the areas in question were occupied by indigenous populations, it seems that the establishment of deals and the undertaking of various types of negotiations between the autochthonous society and the new arrivals will have been indispensable. In the river mouth the Phoenician alphabet and language were used, a situation confirmed by the inscriptions founded in Lisbon and Almaraz. In the medium course of the river, however, a Southwest graffito showed the use of two different systems of writing, even if the archaeological materials, architectural features and construction techniques were the same.

Historiographical approach to the study of the Celts in Portugal, with special attention to the contributions of archeology and linguistics in the 20th century and to the new data on genetics and paleoethnology in the 21st century, in which popular traditions are essential, including literature. Celts are defined from their components as an ethno‑culture: material culture, economy, society, political structure, language, anthropology, religion, etc., and its diachronic and geographical changes, in addition to interaction with other ethnic groups in a continuous process of ethnogenesis. From this perspective, the origin of the Celts in the Iberian Peninsula is analyzed. Recent genetic and linguistic data indicate that they come from a bell‑beaker substrate from which the Atlantic Bronze derives. On this “Proto‑Celtic” substrate of the Atlantic Bronze Age expanded new elements from the Urnfields Culture, from which derive the Celtiberian peoples. This long process explains the diversity of the Celtic peoples in Iberia as a result of a complex ethnogenesis, which ends with the Roman Conquest.

A synthesis of the Roman occupation of the municipality of Oeiras is presented. The data obtained reveals an early Italic influence, since the beginning of the Empire, in continuity with the strong Mediterranean presence verified in the end of the Iron Age. The occupation of the territory, had an essentially agrarian character, related to the polyculture carried out in the various villae rusticae identified, especially implanted in calcareous soils, partly related to the supply of the great city that was the city of Olisipo at the time, ca. 15 km away, but easily connected by the Tagus river. The archaeological remains comprise many imported products, revealing the openness to Mediterranean trade, a reality that remained even after the fall of the Empire, being proved by the 6th century AD phocean ceramic productions. In addition, the existence of two funerary epigraphs reinforce the ide integration of these communities in the Roman Empire since the 1st century AD. One of them reveals by the typology, the adoption of Roman models by the population, already widely acculturated, as it is denounced by the cognomen of the deceased, clearly indigenous. The other epigraph reveals at the same time, a harmonic acculturation accompanied by an evident cosmopolitism, since it corresponds to the grave of a aquilifer of second legion, who, being a native here, will have traversed several areas of the Empire, before returning to their homeland, where he probably ended his military career.

In the archaeological excavations carried out in 2017 in the Historic Center of Oeiras (Lisbon, Portugal), an ivory parasol handle was collected in a Roman context whose chronology does not exceed the end of the 2nd century AD. This is the first time that a specimen of this nature it is identified in the Iberian Peninsula, underlining its extreme rarity, whose use was reserved for the ladies of the social elite of the time.

We present the study of two specimens of Conus pulcher (Lightfoot), 1786, whose geographical distribution extends from the coast of Mauritania to the Gulf of Guinea, collected in the archaeological excavations carried out in 1879/1880 in the cave of Fontainhas ( Lisbon District, Cadaval municipality). The dating obtained by radiocarbon preferably places the age of the specimens between the last quarter of the 15th century and the mid‑17th century. Thus, both the chronology and the geographic distribution of these specimens are compatible with the production, both in the Sierra Leone region and in Benin, of ivory pieces that supplied the Kingdom and the courts of Europe as sumptuous and exotic products. The presence in Portugal of this two shells can thus be explained by being exotic pieces that aroused interest, even by their beauty. However, the reason for their intentional deposition in a cave set up in a deserted place, such as the culminating platform of the Montejunto mountain remains unknown.

The inauguration of a monument alluding to the prehistoric village of Leceia, in the municipality of Oeiras, on 10 July 2020 is the object of this notice. Integrated in the urban rehabilitation of the area, this monument, due to its visibility, its aesthetic and architectural quality and the symbolism of the chosen iconographic motifs, together with the use of materials alluding to the Copper Age, constitutes one of the most notable contributions to the public recognition of the prestige of the Portuguese archaeological Heritage, in the case due to the initiative of the Oeiras Municipal Council.

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The exhaustive study of the evolved Early Neolithic (ca. 5300-5000 cal BC) site of Carrascal (Oeiras) is presented, encompassing the various aspects of the archaeological record represented in it. Based on the results obtained, it is possible to conclude by a stable and peri-annual human presence, where the main economic activity would be centered on the exploitation of the Cretaceous flint benches, very abundant in the location of the station and in its surroundings.

The results of the excavations carried out between 2004 and 2006 at the Encosta de Sant´ Ana located in the Historic Center of Lisbon are presented. The formation of the respective stratigraphic sequence was characterized and all the collected remains were thoroughly studied, analyzing the respective distribution among the excavated areas and their potential relationship with the identified archaeological structures. The absolute chronology was determined by two radiocarbon AMS analysis, which situate this occupation in the Early evolved Neolithic in the transition from the 6th to the 5th millennium BC, allowed the establishment of comparisons with several sites of similar chronology, located in the region surrounding the Tagus estuary. For the archaeological structures identified; for the safe stratigraphy that made it possible to consider the recovered remains as constituting complete and closed sets, of great importance both in diversity and in the number of artefacts; and also due to the absolute chronology strictly determined by two AMS dating of bone samples from the terrestrial biosphere, the Encosta de Sant’ Ana site assumes itself as one of the most relevant sites of the Early Neolithic published so far in Portuguese territory.

Archaeological excavations carried out at a Southwestern Late Bronze Age settlement located in the Portuguese left bank of the Guadiana river allowed the identification of four contemporary loci. The material culture recovered consists of a large quantity of ceramics, in addition to some lithic and bronze artefacts. Based on about two hundred ceramic vessels from which it was possible to reconstruct their shapes, a typological framework was built that could serve as a basis for future studies and comparisons of coeval ceramic collections. ln addition to the undecorated pottery, several pattern-burnished ceramics were recorded, most of them with the decoration on the external surface of the vases, as is usual in the Portuguese southwest. Of the four loci identified, one of them stands out on a small hill, unlike the others located on the plain. Most of the ceramics with pattern-burnished decoration were registered in this locus, which indicates that it will correspond to an area where the habitat of people of high social status would be located. These facts indicate that in these settlements without any defence conditions there would already be a hierarchy in the community.

Understanding metalwork hoarding and deposition in wet contexts involves multiple problems that can be approached from different perspectives. Besides interpreting its potential meanings (which are certainly diachronically different and determined by regional cultural specificities), the researcher also faces complex methodological issues of a different nature. Such issues have no relation to chronology and are particular to this type of archaeological record. One of the most important arises from the fluid or muddy nature of watery or wet depositional contexts. Those contexts are prone to environmental changes and are frequently affected by bank and shore dynamics, like in the cases of rivers, lakes, etc. This text discusses watery and wet context (riverbank or shore) metalwork depositions, focusing on a specific period - the Bronze Age - and a specific region - Portuguese territory. The authors only address bronze artefacts, gathering the available information about their identification, characterization and loci of find, alongside a criticai perspective about each one and methodological considerations. The base data here discussed comprises 28 records of finds that could be related to watercourses and their banks. Most of these finds are located in the centre-north of Portugal.