0013 - A new page dedicated to posters

It is now available in this blog a page dedicated to publish posters about Perdigões research presented in scientific meetings. We start with this one, presented in 2006, and in the next days others will be available. See page above.

0012 - Paper on figurines

Published this year.

0011 – Research in Perdigões ivory

After the papers on ivory lunulae (Valera, 2010), ivory anthropomorphic figurines (Valera and Evangelista, 2014) and ivory zoomorphic figurines (Valera, Evangelista and Castanheira, in press) a new is in preparation, summarizing and debating the ivory materials from Perdigões to be submitted to thematic volume of World Archaeology journal (António Valera, Thomas Schuhmacher and A. Banerjee will be authors).

In this context the study of figurines is being completed with this year findings at the cremation contexts. And these figurines don’t cease to amaze us. That is the case of this large head (34mm high) that presents 4 eye holes organized by two pairs. One of the eyes is still inlaid with white paste, reinforcing the argument that large and deep eye holes in some of these figurines were inlaid with some materials. In another figurine from Perdigões, one of the eyes still has a small stone fixed with some sort of clay.

 

(Photo by António Valera)

 

But this head also show us that some of these figurines were quite big. In the paper already published (Valera and Evangelista, 2014) we were able to determine the general percentage of the size of the heads relating the all body (through the measurement of several complete figurines from South Iberia). They seem to cluster in two groups, one around 18% and another around 13%. Assuming these percentages, this head would belong to a figurine with 19 cm (in the first cluster) or 26cm (in the second cluster).

So, there are some quite large ivory anthropomorphic figurines at Perdigões.

Bibliographic References:

VALERA, António Carlos (2010), "Marfim no recinto calcolítico dos Perdigões (1): "Lúnukas, fragmentação e ontologia dos artefactos", Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património, 5, Lisboa, NIA-ERA Arqueologia, p. 31-42.

VALERA, A.C. E EVANGELISTA, L.S. (2014), “Anthropomorphic figurines at Perdigões enclosure: naturalism, body proportion and canonical posture as forms of ideological language”, Journal of European Archaeology, 17(2), pp.286-300.

VALERA, EVANGELISTA AND CASTANHEIRA, in press, “Zoomorphic figurines and the problem of Human-Animal relationship in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Southwest Iberia”, Menga.

0010 – The anthropological study of human remains from Perdigões tomb 1.

 

Secundary human depositions in tomb 1 of Perdigões (photo by Miguel Lago)

The Perdigões ditched enclosure has being continuously investigated since 1997 and during the last years, several funerary structures have been unearthed, with traces of a variety of mortuary practices that include inhumations and cremations found in different architectural solutions like tombs, pits or ditches. Among them is Tomb 1, a tholos type structure discovered in the eastern side of this site where a large amount of human remains were recovered.

The anthropological study of these remains is now in course at the department of Anthropology of the University of Coimbra by Lucy Evangelista that is doing a PhD with this material.

The intention with this doctoral thesis is to, through anthropological analysis of the human remains recovered from Tomb I and the identification of the funerary rules and attitudes present, contribute to the better understanding of the attitudes towards death that were taking place at Perdigões. In addition she will pursue to contextualize the information recovered from the laboratorial study within the global information already available, not only for the other funerary structures identified in the site, but also in a wider regional context where other coeval collections have been studied.

0009 – Constructing the temporality of Perdigões enclosure

A paper was recently published on Perdigões temporalities. It can be download here.

Based in a set of 35 radiocarbon dates, an image of progressive growing of the site is emerging. Starting with to central enclosures dating from Late Neolithic (second half of the 4th millennium), grew bigger with the intermediate wavy ditches dated from the second quarter of the 3rd millennium and finally with construction of the ditch 1 in the topo of the amphitheater slope in the second half of the 3rd millennium.

However, this image of a progressing growing must be seen as provisory, since several ditches still to be dated, namely the one that runs partially out of ditch 1 and is cut by it. If this ditch is older, Neolithic for instance, than the site was big since the beginning.

This is an important step into the Perdigões temporalities, but is still just a step. Further research is needed to provide a complete image of the diachronic development of this impressive set of enclosures 

0008 – Research in Perdigões Copper Metallurgy

A "bell beaker" dagger from Perdigões.

A new general line of research has been established for Perdigões Global Program of Research focus on copper metallurgy. Although there is some research being done for some while in the context of specific sub projects of this global program mainly orientated to other issues, now it will be developed a specific project for the problematic of copper metallurgy at Perdigões as a whole.

This project will be developed through the collaboration of the Global Program of Archaeological Research of Perdigões, directed by Nia-Era, and the Hercules laboratory of the University of Évora (Portugal).

The sub-project aims to determine the chemical composition of the metal artefacts;   to perform qualitative and quantitative crystallographic analysis on slag; the identification of micro structural characteristics to inform about the techniques and efficiency of production.

The methods to be used are pXRF, OM, SEM-EDS and XRD.

The team from Hercules Laboratory, that will be working in direct relation with the Perdigões Global Research Program, is constituted by Carlo Bottaini, José Mirão, António Candeias and Nick Schiavon.

We will be providing information about the development of the project.

0007 – Stone idols and pots from funerary context: provenance and interaction

Stone idol from cremations pit 40 (Excavations NIA-ERA Arqueologia)

A new archaeometric project is being developed at Perdigões regarding the determination of the raw materials and their provenance for the stone idols and pots from some of the Perdigões funerary contexts.

In fact, the artefactual assemblages from the pits with human cremations present considerable differences when compared with those from the tholoi tombs, although the radiocarbon dating shows that these several feature were simultaneously in use for some time. Archeometric studies to determine the raw materials and their provenance can then be helpful to evaluate the nature of these differences inside Perdigões and also to further characterize the interaction network in which the site was involved.

This project will be carried out by the Nuclear and Technological Institute, Lisbon, in collaboration with the Budapest Neutron Centre. The techniques to be use in archaeological materials and raw material samples from several areas of Central-South Portugal are the Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis (PGAA), Neutron Tomography, External Beam PIXE and Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS).

The work will start tomorrow, at Budapest.

0006 - STABLE ISOTOPE AND MERCURY ANALYSES OF HUMAN REMAINS IN PERDIGÕES

Dr. Steven D. Emslie, University of North Carolina, Department of Biology and Marine Biology, and Dr.William P. Patterson, Saskatchewan Isotope Laboratory, University of Saskatchewan, Canada initiated a collaboration with the Perdigões Research Project.

They propose to complete stable isotope analyses of δ13C and δ15N on human remains that have been recovered in Perdigões, in an attempt to understand past diets and variations in diets among the people that lived and circulated there. The well-preserved human bone at Perdigões will be ideal for analyzing collagen for both stable isotopes and mercury using small samples (< 5 g) from each skeleton.  These isotopes will provide information on the major trophic level from which these people were subsisting, and whether they had a diet based largely on wild plants and grains or included meat or perhaps some marine-based food sources. 

Recent research on strontium isotopes from human remains at this site suggests that the people at this site were from out site the regions where Perdigões is located.  The analyses of stable isotopes and mercury may provide additional support for this hypothesis as people migrating from different regions are likely to have considerable variation in δ13C and δ15N in their bone, averaged over a lifetime, as well as different exposures to mercury

A pilot study is undergoing using 20 small samples of human bone (from 20 individuals) from existing collections from Chalcolithic Tomb 1 and 2 and from Neolithic pit graves and Chalcolithic cremated remains.  The first results are quite surprising and will be presented at 37th Annual Meeting of the Joint Society of Ethnobiology & Society for Economic Botany Conference, Cherokee, NC, from May 11–14, 2014.

A larger sub-project will be designed for future research in the context of the Global Archaeological Research Programme of Perdigões.

0005 - Metallurgy of gold in Perdigões

It will be soon published a paper about the metallurgy of the gold small blades from tomb 2 of Perdigões. This work was presented at the 39th International Symposium of Archaeometry, in Leuven (2012), and is in press in the proceedings.  Are authors António Monge Soares, Luís C. Alves, José C. Frade, Pedro Valério, M. Fátima Araújo, António Candeias, Rui J.C. Silva and António C. Valera.

0004 - Research in human figurines – 3

Decorated loom weight publishied in Milesi, 2013 (This photo copyright: A.C. Valera).

Although it is not a figurine (in the sense that is not a sculpture), this is a quite interesting piece. It is half of a loom weight that has part of an anthropomorphic figure depicted in one side and a set of zig-zag lines in the other. It was collected in Sector L of Perdigões, in the context of gate 1, in the excavations carried out by Málaga University team and was published this year (Milesi et al, 2013).

This piece has, at least, to major factors of interest.

First it has a representation of the human body in a schematic-linear style associated, in the back, to what we might interpret as the long hair that is present in many anthropomorphic figurines (see here). This could justify a connection between this two forms of anthropomorphic representation.

Secondly, the representation of the anthropomorphic figure has great similarities with other rock art depictions also using the schematic-linear style, usually with the hands and feet represented in a radiate way.

The similarities are striking with the anthropomorphic figures represented in Rocha da Hera (Vilhena e Alves, 2007) in the Mira valley, Molino de Manzánez (Collado Giraldo, 2006) and Agualta 7 (Alves, 2013), both in Guadiana valley and very close to Perdigões. The image from Agualta 7 even has two zig-zag vertical lines, suggesting the representation of the hair.

A. La Madre del Cordero, Molino de Manzánez (after Collado Giraldo, 2006); B. Agualta 7 (after Alves, 2013).

Rocha da Hera (Vilhena e Alves, 2007)

These anthropomorphic figures in schematic-linear style are not very frequent and their chronology is not easy to establish. Because they appear near proto-historic contexts they have been considered to date from Bronze Age or Iron Age. However, Agualta 7, for instance, is next to a Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic site (Moinho de Valadares).

The stylistic similarities with the representation from Perdigões shows us that this kind of anthropomorphic depictions go back to the 3^rd millennium BC and that this chronology could be extended to some of the figures carved in rock art (such Agualta 7). In particular, since the middle of that millennium, when more explicit representations of the human body seams to became more frequent.

References:

Alves, L.B. (2013), “Anexo 1. A rocha gravada de Agualta 7”, (A.C. Valera cood.), As comunidades agropastoris na margem esquerda do Guadiana. 2ª metade do IV aos inícios do II milénio AC, Memórias d’Odiana, 6, 2ª Série, p.505-538.

Collado Giraldo, H. (2006), Arte Rupestre en la Cuenca del Guadiana: el conjunto de grabados del Molino Manzánez (Alconchel – Cheles). Beja (Memória d’Odiana – Estudos Arqueológicos de Alqueva; 4).

Milesi, L.; Caro, J. L.; Fernandéz, J. (2013), "Hallazgos singulares en el  contexto de la Puerta 1 del complexo arqueológico de Perdigões", Portugal. Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património 9/2013. Lisboa. NIA-ERA. p. 55-59

Vilhena, J. e Alves, L.B. (2007), “Subir à maior altura. Espaços funerários, lugares do quotidiano e arte rupestre no contexto da Idade do Bronze do Médio/Baixo Mira”, Vipasca, nº2, 2ª série, p.194-218.

0003 - Research in human figurines - 2

Published in Valera, 2012 (Copyright A.C. Valera)

This is an assemblage of the so called “almeriense idols”. This kind of figurines was assumed to be Chalcolithic, but it didn’t have clear and well preserved contexts or good radiocarbon dating.

In Perdigões, this assemblage appeared in unquestionable Late Neolithic contexts: the five from the left in the bottom of ditch 12 and the one from the right in the low levels of the “hypogeum 1” structure. These contexts are characterized by Late Neolithic pottery an in ditch 12 these anthropomorphic figurines were deposited just a few centimetres from a bone that was dated between 3360-3090 cal BC (2 σ).

Although it is possible to assume that these kind of figurines were used during Chalcolithic times (first half of the 3^rd millennium BC), these contexts clearly show that they emerged in a Neolithic moment and that they are part of a Neolithic ideology that, as I have been stressing, goes into the 3^rd millennium BC. What we use to call Chalcolithic is not a rupture with the Neolithic. It is, in fact, the final expression of its world view. And the development of Perdigões shows this in several ways.

This assemblage was published in Valera, 2012 (see the bibliography page for a complete reference and download link)

0002 – Research in human figurines - 1

The recent excavation of pits with the deposition of human cremated remains provided quite important new information about funerary practices in chalcolithic Perdigões (and in Chalcolithic Iberia). Associated to these depositions (still in excavation) there were several human figurines, well known in South Iberia, but until now absent in Portugal. They are made of ivory and the majority is burned and fragmented, suggesting that they were submitted to fire with the human remains (as well as other materials).

Published in Valera & Evangelista, in press. (Copyright A.C.Valera)

This assemblage of figurines was recently studied and a paper will be published in the Journal of European Archaeology. More than discuss what they might represent, the paper focus on the pattern, realism and postures of the figurines and on their possible social role.

This is the abstract:

“Based on a set of anthropomorphic figurines, this paper suggests that the search for realistic human proportion and canonical posture in the carving of those objects as means of expressing ideology through body postures, in a context of diversified forms of manipulation of the bodies in funerary practices.      

It is argued that, against a background of predominantly schematic art, the more realistic and canonical anthropomorphic representation of the human body is used to communicate, a set of ideological statements in a more controlled and immediate way, possibly of ideological and social nature, in a period of ontological and cosmological transition.”

Reference:

António Carlos Valera and Lucy Shaw Evangelista, “Anthropomorphic figurines at Perdigões enclosure: naturalism, body proportion and canonical posture as forms of ideological language.” in press.

0001 – Perdigões Research Program

This new web page is dedicated to the public display of Perdigões Research Program. Here, the visitor can get information about the organization of the program, collaborating researchers and institutions and developments of the project. A list of complete bibliographic references (with links to online papers), newsletters and images of the site, excavations and archaeological materials will be available.

The page will be regularly actualized, so be in touch with Perdigões.