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For the first time, the Latin translation of the passage about prehistoric tools from Michele Mercati Metallotheca Vaticana’s famous work of the 16th century Natural History Vatican collections is published. Although it is the first work that reproduces polished stone axes, arrowheads and flint blades, discussing its meaning according to the conception of the time, the present study constitutes the first contribution about the knowledge of the epoch in this specific matter, with evidente interest to the History of ideas and concepts in Archaeology.

In the 1879/1880 campaign of excavations in the Casa da Moura cave (Óbidos, Portugal) Nery Delgado chose the main room of the cave, corresponding to the area closest to the entrance and bounded on the opposite side by a large block dropped from the roof for the application of a new methodology for archaelogical field works. Having an approximate sub-triangular contour, occupying the entry site one of the vertices, the excavated space was divided into orthogonal sectors, designated by letters, delimiting tendentially equal elemental excavation areas, since they had accommodated to the pre-existing cave geometry. The publication of exhaustive and systematic inventories of the materials collected in each of the excavated sectors previously defined, according to their collection depth defined by artificial levels, revealed the exceptional quality of Nery Delgado’s work as an archaelogist, and his original contribution to the methodology of modern archaeological excavations. It´s name should be considered among one of the most notable pioneers of European archeology.

In this paper we publish the report prepared in 1866 by Frederico de Vasconcelos Pereira Cabral (1820-1886) after his visit in 1865 to Monte Real, concerning the characterization of the geological conditions of a funerary deposit of Neolithic age occasionally found in the previous year and whose human remains were then buried in the local cemetery. Among the scarce spoils that the author obtained in 1865 from the inhabitants of Monte Real, there is a schist plaque that was, together with the exemplars recovered in the excavations of Nery Delgado held in the same year in the cave of the Casa da Moura the first to be duly recognized as prehistoric artifacts. The scientific quality of this report would suffice to place its author among the pioneer archaeologists of Portugal, confirming his priority in other contributions of a geological and archaeological nature, such as the publication in 1881 of the first Paleolithic artefacts collected in Portuguese territory. This study is also a contribution to draw attention to the pioneer activity of its author in the field of Archeology, as a member of the Geological Commission of Portugal.

Study of 15 idols preserved in various collections in Portugal, such as the National Library of Portugal and the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa. They constitute interesting falsifications of the 18th century, that are cataloged by tipes. Their iconography was probably inspired in antiquarian engravings by A. Kircher, B. de Montfaulcon, the Count of Caylus and J. B. Piranesi. These idols document the interest in pre-Roman divinities emerged in the Enlightenment environment promoted by the Bishop of Beja and Archbishop of Évora, Don Manuel de Cenaculo.

This article discusses the intellectual path of the Portuguese collector and researcher António Mesquita de Figueiredo. Being a practically unknown personality, we sought to understand the causes of this historiographical forgetting based on the occurrence of public disagreements in the early twentieth century with the director of the Portuguese Ethnological Museum, José Leite de Vasconcelos. The identification of more than a dozen letters sent to Salomon Reinach between 1897 and 1918, as well as the correspondence exchanged with other impotant Portuguese and foreign archaelogists and intellectuals, justifies the analysis of his internacional networks, the nature of his scientific production as well as its contribution to the enrichment of Portuguese museum collections and its consequente involvement in the processes of construction of historical knowledge.

In times of change, the nineteenth century in Portugal witnesses remarkable events from the Napoleonic Wars to the Ultimatum. In this context we seek to insert the life of Januário Correia de Almeida, based on the book of João Luís Cardoso edited in the special number 2018 of the Estudos Arqueológicos de Oeiras. This article was prepared based on the presentation of the work that took place on 13 April 2019 in Oeiras.

Este número 25 de una revista científica como ESTUDOS ARQUEOLÓGICOS DE OEIRAS es muy significativo, pues revela veteranía y gran madurez. No quiero, por prudencia, referirme a la clarividencia del Prof. Cardoso al instituir esta revista, desde su brillante idea inicial de crearla al esfuerzo continuado, año tras año a lo largo de un cuarto de siglo, para acrecentar su interés científico y su prestigio al servicio de todos.

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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.