life-histories of megaliths Portugal

Submitted by Andy B on Friday, 30 August 2002 Page Views: 2920

Country: Portugal The study of life-histories of megaliths is now emerging as a whole research field and there are several publications that address this topic.

There is the web page of Cornelius Holtorf, who studied life- histories of megaliths in a very interesting way. You can find a lot of references there. Besides, there is one issue of the journal World Arachaeology (30/1, 1998) devoted to 'The reuse of Ancient Monuments'.

As you will see, Holtorf deals with reuses, reinterpretations, reconstructions... from the beginnings until the present day, including archaeological research as one part of the life-histories of megaliths (for instance, he is himself excavating a megalith in Portugal and he collected and labelled some cigarette ends because they were on the megalith: the megalith had ben reused as a 'pleasant place to smoke a cigarette').

The history of a megalith reused by the Romans is in R. Bradley, 2000, 'Vera Collum and the excavation of a Roman megalithic tomb', in Antiquity 74(2000), 39-43. Also in former books by Bradley you will find the topic of what he calls the "afterlife" of megaliths.

Another megalith reused by the Romans was published by Caamaño and Criado (1992-3) in Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos.

In Southern Portugal there are two very interesting dolmens that were transformed into christian chapels (Dolmen de Pavia and Dolmen de Santa Maria de Alcobertas) You can see photos in these links:
http://www.farmacia-pavia.com/patrim.html
http://www.terravista.pt/enseada/2510/locais/mora/pavia.htm
http://fx.fisica.ist.utl.pt/arquideia/Sitios/pavia.html
http://www.eb123-fernando-casimiro.rcts.pt/areaescola/alcobertas/alcobertas.htm

I dealt with the later histories of megaliths in NW Iberia in detail, coverning from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Particularly, how they were used as landmarks in the Middle Ages (very very often - there are hundreds of references from medieval documents), how they were used as 'gold sources' (there is a judicial review from the 17th-c referring to a huge trial that involved thousands of people about the destruction of hundreds of megaliths by Galician peasants, in search of treasures. The trial started because the gold in the mounds was meant to belong to the king) Then they are also used as sources of stone for buildings, some are 'christianised' by erecting crosses on them and, since the Enlightenment, in the 18th-c, some people start to fight superstition and to consider megaliths as sources of information about the past, which is the attitude still held today.

You can find the results of this research in some recent publications:

Martinon-Torres, M, 2001. Los monumentos megaliticos despues del megalitismo. Valga (Pontevedra, Spain): Concello de Valga.

Here and in Holtorf´s web site you will find more references.

Martinon-Torres, M. 2001. Los megalitos de termino. Cronica del valor territorial de los monumentos megaliticos a partir de las fuentes escritas.
Trabajos de Prehistoria, 58(1)

Martinon-Torres, M, and Rodriguez Casal, AA, 2000. Aspectos historiograficos del megalitismo gallego: de la documentacion medieval al siglo XIX, in V. Oliveira Jorge (dir), Neolitizacâo e Megalitismo da Peninsula Ibérica. Actas do III Congresso de Arqueologia Peninsular (Vila Real, Portugal, September 1999), vol. III, pp. 303-319. Porto: ADECAP

Another paper in English is forthcoming in the Proceedings of the last congress of the UISPP in Liege (September 2001).

Regards,

Marcos Martinón-Torres
PhD student
Institute of Archaeology
University College London

Contributor Bio for Andy B: Megalithic Portal Founding Editor.

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