Ivory in the Chalcolithic enclosure of Perdigões (South Portugal): the social role of an exotic raw material

Campaniforme o no Campaniforme: una perspectiva sobre las cerámicas ‘pellizcadas’ en vasos con perfil en ‘s’ del Calcolítico en la Península Ibérica

“…Firstly, the clear dispersion and almost isolation of the 22 Iberian archaeological sites with paired fingernail motifs, that only present three slight concentrations -Portuguese Estremadura, the Middle Guadiana area and the Southern Spanish Meseta-. This geographical panorama suggests different relationships and dispersion routes mainly connected to rivers with greater flow, as it occurs in all the mentioned clusters with connections to the Tagus Basin, the Guadiana area, which has already been pointed to the distribution of other exotic artefacts (Valera et al, 2015), and the Manzanares.…”

Use of Monte Carlo Simulation as a Tool for the Nondestructive Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (ED-XRF) Spectroscopy Analysis of Archaeological Copper-Based Artifacts from the Chalcolithic Site of Perdigões, Southern Portugal

“…Finally, the data reported in this paper also provide a preliminary appreciation of the role that metals had to have at Perdigões. Despite the monumentality and the significance of the site, probably used as a meeting point between communities from distinct regions and with clear connections with cosmology and astronomy, and also considering the wealth and variability of the materials recovered in the excavation, in most cases imported from elsewhere, 13 metals from Perdigões appear to confirm a clear trend that also occurs in other Iberian Chalcolithic sites. Artifacts are composed of copper-based alloys with variable amounts of As and appear to be produced domestically, on a small scale and with a simple technology whose knowledge is disseminated all over the Iberian Peninsula, persisting with few innovations up to the last quarter of the second millennium BC.…”

“…The overall available data suggest that Perdigões probably was a meeting place able to congregate people and materials from a large transregional area, including the Portuguese coast (Estremadura and Alentejo Litoral), the Spanish Central Meseta, western and central Andalusia, and northwestern Africa. 13…”

“…13 The unique morphology of the site where Perdigões is located, a natural theatre opened to the east and with visibility over more than one hundred megalithic monuments located in the surrounding areas and the orientation of the gates of the enclosures, e.g., aligned to both solstices at sunrise and at sunset, suggest that Perdigões was symbolically placed within a cosmological scenario recreated through the interaction between architecture and landscape. 14 or empirical calibration, 15 were used.…”

The preburning condition of Chalcolithic cremated human remains from the Perdigões enclosures (Portugal)

“…All these cremation contexts contrast with the remaining noncremation funerary contexts not only in body processing but also because the funerary structures and the associated grave goods differ completely. As a result, such funerary differences have been hypothesised to relate to social‐cultural differences and processes of social emulation (Valera, ; Valera, Schuhmacher, & Banerjee, ). Although there are some more Neolithic/Chalcolithic funerary contexts in Portugal containing burned human remains, such as Cabeço de Moínhos (Silva, Tereso, Cruz, & Bettencourt, ), Eira da Pedrinha (Corrêa & Teixeira, ), Anta das Castelhanas (Oliveira, ), and Olival da Pega 2b (Silva et al, ), it is unclear whether those remains were intentionally burned as part of a funerary practice or burned post‐depositionaly due to other nonfunerary processes.…”