0025 - Almerinse/Cruciforme figurines

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

These figurines are classified in Portuguese archaeological literature as "Almeriense idols". In the Spanish one they are called "cruciformes", and they were thought to be of Chalcolithic origin (that is, from the 3rd millennium BC).

At Perdigões, though, they occur in a ditch deposition that is dated from the Late Neolithic (Ditch 12), between 3300 - 3100 cal BC. It is, so far, the oldest dated (in absolute terms) context where these figures appear in Iberia. Important, because it clearly shows that the 3rd millennium social trajectory, namely in terms of iconography and ideology, started in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. A frontier between the Late Neolithic and the Chalcolithic that, in terms of social trajectories, just doesn't make sense anymore, at least in the Iberian Southwest.

Published here.