Catarina Costeira

The archaeological excavation of Torre Velha 3 was  carried out by  Palimpsesto – Estudo e Preservação do Património Cultural Lda. under the project Minimização de Impactes sobre o Património Cultural decorrentes da Construção da Barragem da Laje (Serpa), EDIA SA The occupation dated from Late Antiquity consists in a large set of almost 300 structures with habitacional and funerary contexts of various types, concentrated on three areas. The data presented here are still preliminary, however, we can point out that this site will have worked in close relationship with Torre Velha 1 and Torre Velha 7. A full understanding of these occupations can only be realized in an integrated study of the whole Laje’s valley.

Este trabalho pretende ser o primeiro avanço sobre um conjunto de realidades relacionadas usualmente com o mundo do sagrado das comunidades pré-históricas, documentado nos povoa-dos de São Pedro. Pretende-se apenas apresentar a descrição e categorização dos ídolos e figurações passíveis de serem integradas nesta categoria de difícil enquadramento, intentando-se depois uma breve síntese integradora da sua presença no local e na região. O conjunto dos gestos do simbólico será posteriormente apresentado em trabalho autónomo.

This paper aims to be the first breakthrough on a set of artifacts usually related to the sacred of prehistoric communities, documented in the settlement of São Pedro. It is intended only to present the description and categorization of idols and figurations that can be included in this category, after this we will try a brief overview of its presence on site and the region.

Presentation of a set of engraved schist plaques
found at the Castelo de Pavia (Mora), a typical Chalcolithic
settlement of the Alentejo, probably fortified and
occupied in the third millennium B.C.
The authors revisit the theme of their paper
presented at the international congress of Rock Art
(IFRAO 2015), based on later identification of other
materials from the same site found in the reserves of
the National Museum of Archaeology in Lisbon.

Torre Velha 3 archaeological site, a joint-venture
of Palimpsesto - Estudo e Preservação do Património
Cultural Lda and the EDIA’s project Minimização de
Impactes sobre o Património Cultural Decorrentes da
Construção da Barragem da Laje (Serpa), provided
a wide and diachronic range of important contexts, a
total of 589 identified structures, marked by time gaps,
between Copper Age and Late-Roman times. On����������e single
archaeological context from Early Iron Age was identified,
still, it’s possible to place Torre Velha 3 in the Iron Age
group of sites located in the Portuguese territory, due
to the identification, among other artefacts, of a pithos
and a double spring’s fibula, significant items for the
understanding of daily experiences of these communities
of the inner Baixo Alentejo.
The known data from Early Iron Age of the inner Baixo
Alentejo region are very scarce and uneven, despite the
number of acknowledged and excavated sites.
The secondary context in which the Torre Velha 3
artefacts were found, a wide negative interface, adds
little knowledge of construction patterns to this Early
Iron Age area. However, the presence of this particular
kind of pottery and metal artefacts suggests one of the
oldest evidence for the Early Iron Age in the inner Baixo
Alentejo.

Symbols for the dead in spaces of the living? Some remarks about the presence of engraved schist plaques in settlements in North Alentejo, in the context of Southwest Iberia.

As a typical votive artefact of the megalithic communities of the Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic in Southwest Iberia, the engraved schist plaques can be found mainly in funerary contexts during the last centuries of the 4th millennium and the firsts of the 3rd millennium BCE. However, these artefacts are also present in residential spaces, being found in open settlements, fortified settlements and ditched enclosures, with radiocarbon dates that fall between the last quarter of the 4th millennium and the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Using several sites of the region of North Alentejo as case studies, the authors intend to put forward some interpretive lines about the presence of these artefacts in residential contexts – debating questions such as the existence of actual production areas within the settlement space (workshops) or the recovery and reintroduction of these artefacts in residential areas (as relics, understood in the context of new symbolic concepts), possibly recovered during the reuse of megalithic monuments, a practice widely known in the Southwest Iberia throughout the whole 3rd millennium and even in the 2nd millennium BCE.

The archaeological excavation of Torre Velha 3 was recently carried out by Palimpsesto – Estudo e Preservação do
Património Cultural Lda. under the project Minimização de Impactes sobre o Património Cultural decorrentes da Construção da Barragem da Laje (Serpa), responsibility of the EDIA SA. The prehistoric occupation of this site is characterized by a small number of contexts from the Chalcolithic period. The Bronze Age period is characterized by sepulchral and habitation contexts. The most significant funerary contexts consists in a set of 25 hypogea, whose burial rituals
and architectural morphology, contributes to reveal a different approach, in the study of funerary practices of the Southwestern Bronze, on the left bank of the Guadiana.

In this paper we analyze the entire set of loom components from the archaeological site of S. Pedro
(Redondo, Central Alentejo, Portugal). The loom components were analyzed from different
perspectives. Firstly, a recording sheet was made for the description of their technological and
typological characteristics, defining two main forms, organized into several types and subtypes, looking
up afterwards an approximation to its functionality. The data were located into spaces and phases of the
S. Pedro’s site, with the aim of, respectively, evaluating the space disposal and the quantitative and
formal behavior of loom components over the diachronic. The loom components are one of the most
typical artifacts of the 3rd millennium BCE settlements of the Southern Iberian Peninsula and a key
element for the study of all transformations that characterized these communitie.

Symbols for the dead in spaces of the living? Some remarks about the presence of engraved schist plaques in settlements in North Alentejo, in the context of Southwest Iberia.

As a typical votive artefact of the megalithic communities of the Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic in Southwest Iberia, the engraved schist plaques can be found mainly in funerary contexts during the last centuries of the 4th millennium and the firsts of the 3rd millennium BCE. However, these artefacts are also present in residential spaces, being found in open settlements, fortified settlements and ditched enclosures, with radiocarbon dates that fall between the last quarter of the 4th millennium and the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Using several sites of the region of North Alentejo as case studies, the authors intend to put forward some interpretive lines about the presence of these artefacts in residential contexts – debating questions such as the existence of actual production areas within the settlement space (workshops) or the recovery and reintroduction of these artefacts in residential areas (as relics, understood in the context of new symbolic concepts), possibly recovered during the reuse of megalithic monuments, a practice widely known in the Southwest Iberia throughout the whole 3rd millennium and even in the 2nd millennium BCE.

In this paper, we address the visibility of women in Portuguese archaeology and how that image is perceived
by the society, through the lens of the digital written press of the last ten years.
Considering sources found in archeology news as a representation of the distribution of women in different
areas of archaeological activity, and their respective positions, we’ve noticed a surprising disparity found in
male and female sources, especially at a time when we have reached gender parity in active archeology professionals.
This female invisibility contributes to the maintenance of gender prejudices and limits the examples
that we pass on to the new generations.

Plastic additions in ceramic sets of the 3rd and beginnings of the 2nd millennium b.C. are frequent, although with different morphologies and distinct cultural and regional representations. These plastic additions are traditionally called prehension elements and/or plastic decoration. They are usually referred as ribbons, nipples, wings and handles, being described in such ways that lack homogeneity and formal comparability, hampering comparisons between different archaeological sites. 
This paper aims to address and to contribute to the standardization of terminology for plastic additions through the comparison between specific artefactual sets, from geographically and chronologically different archaeological sites, namely the settlements of São Pedro (Redondo) and Fraga dos Corvos (Macedo de Cavaleiros).
We also intend to relate these plastic additions features with their usual functional and decorative interpretations.

O sítio do S. Pedro (Redondo, Alentejo), ocupado entre os finais do 4º e inícios do 3º milénio a.n.e, caracteriza-se por uma abundante componente artefactual em pedra lascada, sobretudo em xistos siliciosos e quartzitos. A partir de uma primeira abordagem tecno-tipológica a este conjunto lítico, é destacável a presença de utensílios foliáceos de talhe bifacial, prestando-se aqui um especial enfoque aos chamados “foliáceos ovóides” e “grandes pontas bifaciais” pela sua raridade no contexto neo-calcolítico da região alentejana.

During Prehistory, pottery represents above all a practical production, although with
a functional meaning that stretches beyond its utilitarian feature. It points out a series of
specific activities that could be exclusively economic, but could be symbolic, ideological,
aesthetic and ritual as well – being also assumed as an expression of prestige and social
distinction. It is an element that reflects for itself a set of daily actions and behaviours of a
community, inseparable from the modus vivendi of the First Agro‐Pastoral Societies (from the
Neolithic to the Bronze Age) – inclusively accompanying the agents of a human group in the
funerary contexts.
Right from its first productions in Early Neolithic, pottery corresponds to the archaeological
remain better represented in the artefactual record. Its practical inutility once broken, its
resistence and preservation capacity confers to pottery sherds an almost “ubiquitous” part of
the archaeological record. As archaeographical data, this artefacual category is traditionaly used
in research to establish chrono‐cultural sequences, although it can offer other perspetives
throughout a detailed process of analysis, classification, ordination and interpretation.
Even if we can attend to the construction of new and renovated questionnaires for Material
Cultural analysis over the last years, they were not yet enough to overlap some of the
methodological limitations inherent to the studies of pottery in prehistoric contexts in Iberia,
such as:
– In the archaeological speech, pottery elements are usually used as means for chronological
definition, conditioning their whole informative potential, particularly in what concerns the
purpose of artefact’s production, as well as the entire subsequent Technological Process;
– The criteria for the Sample Selection not always are illustrative, their suitability to the
different kinds of contexts and their representativity in the totality of the ceramic set in study
are not so evident;
– The need for Normalize methologies and criteria of analysis, enabling the procedure of the
indispensable comparative studies, even if one can recognize that each pottery set has an
identity related to the chrono‐cultural and geographic scope in which it was produced and with
the archaeological context in which it was identified;
– The predominance of macroscopical analysis, disclosing generic readings about pastes (temper
and firing) and rarely resorting to tools from another disciplinary fields such as Archaeometry,
mainly due to its costs, but also to the unawareness about the informative potential to which
we can accede;
JIA 2015
VIII YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE
Between science and culture: from interdisciplinarity to the transversality of archaeology
– The frail expression of Experimental Archaeology, a tool that allows a more complete
approach to the production process of the pottery elements and their functionality, providing a
high coefficient of information;
– The studies that look for elements to understand and explain the processes of Archaeological
Site Formation in pottery sherds are still very inconsistent, as well as for the definition of the
possible functionality of a site (resorting to the analysis of preservation condition of artefacts
and in the dimension of sherds, together with their spatial distribution in the excavated areas.
With the organization of this session, we intend to promote an extended reflection about the
issues listed above and in the presentation of new data framed by the following subjects:
– Analysis of the Chaîne Opératoire models (areas of raw‐material procurement; technological
modalities of artefactual production; functionality; manipulation; contexts of use, deposition
and discard);
– Typological Classification;
– Decorative Processes and Systems (social, functional, artistic and/or cultural dimension);
– Pottery as an element of Chronological Definition and evaluation of the
importance/pertinence of eventual “chrono‐cultutal indicators” in the scientific speech in terms
of their precision;
‐ Identification of Continuities and Ruptures in the pottery production in Time and Space;
‐ Analysis of eventual Exchange and Circulation Networks;
‐ Interdisciplinarity, resorting to studies in the fields of Archaeometry, Anthropology and
Ethnography.
The choice for pottery as the principal focus of this session is justifiable by the fact that ceramic
studies are one of the main subjects of the archaeological research of the First Agro‐Pastoral
Societies. It is also substantiated because the category/type of archaeological data in which
pottery is included, in its material dimension, constitutes a privileged link between the fields of
the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences, where the study of Material Culture has now
acquired special importance over the last years.
Therefore, beginning with an essentially, but not exclusively, archaeological overview, our
proposal, with the organization of this session, is to discuss the adoption of an in‐depth analysis
frame, crossing contributes from different disciplinary areas that, with specific perspectives,
work on the fields of Material Culture (namely, of prehistoric pottery). From the Natural
Sciences, in their most analytic aspect, to the Social Sciences, Anthropology in particular, we
assume this session as an opportunity for dialogue and establishment of broad connections and
collaborations in Material Culture studies.