0022 - "Hut" 1 of Perdigões: scaling down the site.

This structure is in the center of Perdigões enclosures.  It slightly overcomes a semicircle, presenting a large overture open to East. It has 10,5 m diameter and a central post hole. The small ditch that defines the semicircle has wedges inside, showing that posts were set along the ditch, forming a circular wall.

(Photo copyright A.C. Valera / Era Arqueologia - pits are earlier and later)

Who was inside would have the visibility limited by the structure to North, South and West, and opened to East, just like it happens with the natural theater where Perdigões is located. This structure reproduces the site visibility: to East, to an horizon limited by both solstices, being therefore a annual calendar at sunrise. This structure seems to scale down the site, but maintaining its visual relation with the local landscape.

(Image copyright A.C. Valera / Era Arqueologia)

It is dated from the middle third millennium BC, and integrates the grate monumental complexity of structures present at the center of the enclosures.

0021 - Ocher

Red ocher is common in funerary contexts, as powder spread over votive materials and bones. At Perdigões, it is present at Tombs 1 and 2. But this concentration in the bottom of a pot occur in a large Late Neolithic pit, in a none funerary context, but where several ideotechnic objects were also present: a decorated "horn idol", decorated schist plaques, an "almeriense" figurine, a possible mask with deer antlers, apart from several structure depositions of ceramic fragments, particularly halves of pots. Remains of ritualized practices.

(Photo copyright A.C. Valera / ERA Arqueologia)

Publicated here.

0020 - Decorated Phalanx

Anthropomorphic figurines made out of phalanges are common in the Southwest Chalcolithic. Perdigões has the larger collection of these peaces in Portugal and possibly in Iberia (around a hundred). They are made of deer or horse phalanges, sometimes carved or painted with the attributes that also occur in other types of figurines of the period or in the "symbolic decoration" of pots (eyes, facial tattoos, zig-zag hair, arms, etc.).

(Photo copyright A.C. Valera / Era Arqueologia)

This is a shaped and carved horse phalanx, with the zig-zag hair represented at the back and the eyes and arms in the front, under a layer of concretions. It is broken in two halves, one collected at the surface of Tomb 2 and the other at the surface of Tomb 3, some 24m away.

0019 - Trivia beads

These are some of the beads made out of Trivia shells.They are part of an assemblage of more than 50 trivia beads collected at the depositions of cremated human remains in the central area of Perdigões. Trivia beads occur at Perdigões since the Neolithic phase. And, during the Chalcolithic, they are also present in the tholoi type tombs in the eastern limits of the site. But is in the context of the deposition of cremated human remains that they have their major concentration. Dated from the middle / third quarter of the 3rd millennium BC.
Naturally, being a sea shell, they are an exogenous item at Perdigões. One of many.

(Photo copyrights A.C. Valera / Era Arqueologia SA.)

To get more information about exogenous sea shells at Perdigões, see here.

0018 - Cinnabar

Cinnabar is an exogenous item at Perdigões and at the inner Alentejo region. It circulates there at least since the late Middle Neolithic (recorded at the hypogeum of Quinta da Abóbada). At Perdigões, it is present during the Chalcolithic in tombs 1 and 2. Usually it appears in funerary contexts, spread over human remains and votive materials, as part of the ritual procedures.

Cinnabar over human mandible in Tomb 1 (Photo copyright Miguel Lago / Era Arqueologia)

Cinnabar, as the origin of Mercury, seems also responsible for the Mercury contamination of many people that have their remains in the site. Used in rituals, possibly inhaled or even eaten, or in tattoos or body paintings, cinnabar might be the responsible for the high concentrations of mercury in many human bones. The isotopic studies already done show that the cinnabar found at Perdigões had its origin at Almaden mines, in Ciudad Real, around 350km away.

For more information see here.

0017 - A large first blade

A first blade (lâmina de crista) of flint. Integrating the concentrated assemblage of more than 80 large blades recorded in Tomb 3 of Perdigões, this blade corresponds to a first extraction from a prepared core, and therefore it present in its surface the marks of the preparation of the core for the knapping. It was the first of a sequence of extractions.

(Photo copyright A.C. Valera / Era Arqueologia)

But these extractions occurred elsewhere. They were not produced at Perdigões. These long blades (several have more than 30 cm, like this one) are exogenous objects at the site and document the integration of Perdigões in large scale networks of circulation of exotic and valued materials. Some of these blades are of oolithic flint and have their probable origin in the central Andalusia, in the Betic mountains, some 600 km away from Perdigões.

0016 - Small stone pot

This is a typical stone pot, sometimes called mortar or grail, from the Chalcolithic. 25 of them were collected so far in Perdigões, some made of limestone and others made of marble. They are ideotechnic objects (related to the sacred) and come mainly from funerary contexts: 15 from Tomb 1, 7 from Tomb 2, 1 from the large pit with cremated remains (Pit 40). The remaining 2 are from surface collecting and from Pit 87 (the only two not directly related to funerary contexts). This is the one from Pit 40 (made of marble).

(Photo copyright Mafalda Capela / Era Arqueologia)

To know more about ideotechnic objects at Perdigões see here.