"(...) e de hi se lyndaram a hum arrife que está na comiada antre a cabeça do circo e as cabeças do meo mundo no qual arrife fezeram duas cruzes (...)" (Carvalhaaes: 1421)

"(...) and from there they went to a rocky place that is between the hillocks of the circus and the hillocks of the mid world in which rocky place they made a cross (...)"

0. Introduction

Since the beginning of the 1990's, Manuel Calado has been referring to the concentration of menhirs and megalithic enclosures located in the ridge that separates the basins of the Tejo and Sado rivers.   In light of the model he has proposed for the neolithization of the Central Alentejo region, the phenomenon has been interpreted as indicating territorial limits deriving from the natural lines of circulation. (Calado, 1990, 1997, 2000; Calado and Sarantopoulos, 1995).

In the research I have been undertaking on the megalithic enclosures and menhirs of the Monfurado hill range (Evora and Montemor-o-Novo), I have aimed to evaluate the architectural structuring of the monuments in relation to celestial phenomena and the landscape.   It was therefore, inevitable that I would address the spatial relationships between the monuments and the Tejo-Sado/Guadiana ridge, as these often correspond directly to topological relationships such as visibility/invisibility, proximity/distance, orientation and accessibility.

The observations I have made contribute directly to previous interpretation as mentioned above.   Most importantly, they indicate that the spatial relationships between monuments and ridges integrate highly symbolic aspects that can be understood in the context of the ritual and cultural activities of the Neolithic communities living in that territory.

'Mid World' is the name given to one of the most important passes in the Ossa range between Castelo and St. Gens (Calado, 2001b. 21).   Also, there are people in the region that affirms that: 'Mid World is the line that goes along the ridge of the Ossa range and separates the waters of the Tejo from that of the Guadiana'.   In the 15 th century paper from which the citation in epigraph was taken, there is described a gift of land in the west of the Monfurado range (whose ridge line coincides with the Tejo-Sado ridge) to monks known as 'poor of the poor life'.   Bearing in mind the information relative to the Ossa range, it seems likely that the term 'hillocks of the mid world', refers to the hillocks along the Tejo-Sado ridge.  

In connection with the research I am undertaking, it is extremely interesting that an expression retains meaning over a 500 year period and, apparently understands ridges as lines that separate 'worlds', and as 'worlds', the basins of the Tejo, Sado and Gaudiana rivers.  

1. The megalithic enclosure of Almendres

The enclosure of Almendres (Pina, 1971, 1976; Gomes, 1994, 1997a, 1997c; Alvim, 1997), is, at 413m, located in the extreme easterly range of the Monfurado hills and is in one of the highest point in the Evora/Montemor-o-Novo region.   The hilltop is oriented north-south and divides the basins of the Valverde and St. Brissos rivers.   The site is located on the summit of an east-facing slope opening out over the Valverde river valley and the plain.   The hilltop aligns to the north and joins the Tejo-Sado ridge at Alto da Abaneja, where until recent times, a pair of menhirs stood.   The minimum distance between the enclosure and the ridge is 5km.

At Almendres the Tejo-Sado/Guadiana ridge is intermittently visible between St. Sebastiao (at 441m, the highest point in the Monfurado range, and 5km to the northwest) with its pair of menhirs, and the Ossa range, around 40km to the northeast.

The Ossa range are a series of elongated hills oriented west-northwest and east-southeast along the Tejo-Guadiana ridge.   Its profile can be seen from Almendres as a group of three hills, ascending in height from north to south: Evora Monte (475m); Caramelo (509m); and St Gens/Castelo (653/642m).   Visibility from Almendres of these important reliefs is limited to those times when visibility reaches 40km, mainly in Autumn, Winter and Spring.

Between St. Sebastiao and Evora Monte (the most northerly elevation of the Ossa range), the Tejo-Sado/Guadiana follows a northeast-southwest direction; between Evora Monte and Castelo (the most southerly elevation) the ridge goes along the primary northwest-southeast direction before turning at Castelo and out of visibility from Almendres.  

St Sebastiao to the northwest and the Ossa range to the northeast define the arc of horizon in which the ridge is visible.   They are the only sections of the ridge that appear on the skyline.

These elevations simultaneously coincide with the limits of the rising and setting of the sun and the moon in the north.

To the east, the arc in which one can observe the rising of the sun and moon coincides with the most distant horizon where visibility is conditioned only by atmospheric conditions.

The region of the rising of the sun and the moon is limited to the northeast by the Ossa range whose three elevations coincide with the two lunar limits and the rising of the sun in the midsummer solstice.   The line of sight to the Ossa range and to the northeast limit of the rising sun is parallel to the main direction of the ridge between St. Sebastiao and Evora Monte.

The horizon to the west is only visible from the highest sector of the enclosure - it is formed by reliefs in the Monfurado hills along the western ridge of the St. Brissos river, c. 5-7km from the enclosure, and is confined to the north with the Tejo-Sado ridge at St. Sebastiao.

In contrast to the eastern side, the setting of the sun and the moon is hidden by close reliefs (5 to 8km) being limited to the northeast by St. Sebastiao.   The skyline drops smoothly to the south with some minor indentations, clearing the horizon to the southwest in the same direction in which the sun sets after the midwinter solstice.

The St Sebastiao hillock is seen from Almendres as an elongated elevation declining from south to north.   At the highest point, seen from Almendres as the southern tip of the elevation, there is a pair of menhirs that are no longer standing.   The azimuth indicated by the pair coincides with the direction of the northern limit of the setting moon during a minor standstill, and the direction of the ridge is invisible behind St Sebastiao until the hillock of Sideral in the extreme west of the range.

The setting of the sun during midsummer solstice occurs in the middle of the hillock.   In addition, the northern extreme of the setting moon during a major standstill occurs to the north of the elevation.

The location of the setting sun during times of equinox is indicated by two hillocks (hills of Conde) into which the sun sets.

There is then, a typical tetrapartition of the horizon in the north, south,east and west quadrants as defined by natural elements and significant astronomical directions:

a) East is the most distant horizon, limited to the northeast by the Ossa range.   The profile, of three elevations coincides with the two extreme positions to the north of the rising sun.

b) North is limited by the Ossa range to the northeast and by St. Sebastiao to the northwest.   The quadrant coincides with the arc of horizon on which the ridge is visible.

c) West is limited to the northwest by St. Sebastiao and to the southwest where the skyline drops below the distant horizon.   The southern extreme of St Sebastiao, where the menhirs are located coincides with the northern extreme of the setting moon during a minor standstill.

The choice of location for the situating of the Almendres enclosure seems unlikely to be coincidental. Taking the above evidence in its totality reveals a visual time-space reference system that associates highly important places in the landscape with the passage of time through the observance of the relative positions of the sun and the moon.

The annual cycle influences the perception of the landscape - conditioning it in respect of the atmospheric conditions particular to each season.   The Ossa range is not visible from Almendres for the greater part of the year when high temperatures and atmospheric pressure limit visibility to a few kilometers, ultimately preventing the observation of the rising sun over the Ossa range during the midsummer solstice.

The morning haze that forms over the plain, in particular around the highest points - like the Ossa and Monfurado ranges - can impede the observation of the rising sun throughout the year.   At present it is normal for the morning haze to disperse only when the sun is at considerable height over the horizon.   Clouds, during the most cloudy seasons, can prevent the observation of the distant horizon and when they are dense or low, the visibility of the closest ones.

Along with the monumentality of the enclosure, the way in which the landscape can be 'read' from Almendres suggest a spatially and temporally significant landscape.   The spaces and rhythms of time are integrated with the same system that prescribes its physical dimensions and astronomical and landscape orientations.   As such, it can be described as a metaphor of the Neolithic cosmos.

2. Other megalithic enclosures in the region of the Monfurado range

The other six megalithic enclosures of the Evora/Montemor-o-Novo region are distributed around the Monfurado range, grouped in pairs (fig. 1):

a) In the Sado basin: Portela de Mogos (Pina, 1971, 1976; Gomes, 1997b) and ale Maria do Meio (Calado and Sarantopoulos,1995; Calado, 2000b) in the basin of the Valverde river (Evora); Monte das Casas de Baixo (Gomes, 1986) and Tojal in the confluence of the Prata and Escoural rivers (Montemor-o-Novo).

b) In the Tejo basin: Cuncos (Gomes, 1986) and Sideral in the basin of the Laje river (Montemor-o-Novo);

In each pair, the enclosures distance between 1.3 to 2.1km and with the exception of the Prata/Escoural pair they are inter-visible between them.   The pairs are not intervisible between eachother.

The Monfurado hills act as a limit of visibility between the pairs of enclosures and the Almendres enclosure, the only exception being the group of the Valverde river (Almendres, Portela de Mogos and Vale Maria do Meio).   The enclosures in this group have a particular relationship between them by their common locality in the basin of the Valverde river; the thematic rock art (Calado 1997b), non-existent in the other enclosures of the region; and by the fact that the three enclosures are inter-visible between them despite the Almendres enclosure being 9km away from the other two.   The group of the Valverde river is the only one from which it is possible to see the Ossa range.

The section of the ridge between the Sideral hillock that dominates the pair of the Laje river and where a menhir also lies, St. Sebastiao, with a pair of lying menhirs and Evora Monte define two axes in the landscape that cross in St. Sebastiao and seems to regulate the location of the enclosures:

a)  Monfurado hills (Sideral-St. Sebastiao): Sideral enclosure over the ridge with Cuncos associated by proximity (1.3km) and visibility; Almendres in the extension to the southeast of the direction of this section

b)  Between the Monfurado hills and the Ossa range (St. Sebastiao-Evora Monte): Portela de Mogos over the ridge with Vale Maria do Meio associated by proximity and visibility; Casas de Baixo and Tojal, as a pair in the alignment of the extension of the axis to the southwest.

These axes are coincident with astronomical directions related with observable limits in cycles of the sun and moon, and each one of the pairs are in an overlay of the general alignment of the ridge with a significant astronomical direction.

At least one enclosure in each pair is sited over the ridge or in the main alignment of the sections.   It is important to note that the enclosures that are directly over the ridge have a great central menhir (Portela de Mogos and Sideral) and the others show menhirs of continuously ascending size.

St. Sebastiao, in the center of the group of enclosures, ensures the inter-visibility between the pairs of enclosures and the Almendres enclosure with the exception of the Laje pair and Almendres.   In this case, the hillocks of St Sebastiao and Sideral, both standing out in the local landscape and with menhirs at their summit, acts as a transport of inter-visibility between Almendres and the Laje pair.

3. Places, paths, limits, directions and celestial bodies: an interpretation

"[...] ritual-like action is activity that gives form to the specialness of a site, distinguishing it from other places in a way that evokes highly symbolic meanings. Such activities differentiate a sacred world - however minute or magnificent - in the midst of a profane one, thus affording experiences of this sacrality that transcend the profane reality of day-to-day life." (Bell, 1997)

The siting of the megalithic enclosures of the Monfurado hills allow us to postulate a straight relationship between them and the Tejo - Sado /Guadiana ridge, as they all are sited over the ridge or in extensions of the main directions of its sections in the Monfurado hills or between the latter and the Ossa range.

The natural coincidence of the alignment of the sections of the ridge with the directions of the rising and setting of the sun and moon in moments of season change, allow us yet to postulate that this fact was perceived by the builders of the enclosures and that the monuments materialized this phenomena, naturalizing the monuments and culturalizing the landscape.

The ridge, through it's characteristic linerarity, is hodological space - space of movement - that can only be understood in its totality by and through movement in the landscape and over the ridge itself, which eventually would permit the builders of the monuments the awareness of the astronomical phenomena described.   This is of course, not difficult to accept in relation to the annual cycle of the sun but in relation to lunar cycle of precession, the length of time involved is considerable.   The precession of the lunar nodes that originates the oscillation for the rising and setting of the moon in the region takes 18.6 years to complete (including major and minor standstills).

We should bear in mind that alignments of this nature have been recorded for prehistoric times in other locations (Ruggles, 1998) and that these show evidence of ritual and religious preoccupations.   It is probable that the function(s) of these types of alignments was to mark the limits of the rising and setting of the sun and moon (Ruggles, 1998).   In the UK, the Dorset Cursus, a Neolithic monument of obvious hodological characteristics, evoking the idea of a 'ritual way', seems to incorporate solar and lunar alignments (Penny and Wood, 1974; Heggie, 1981; Tilley, 1994).

In the case of the Monfurado enclosures, the experience of being in one of the monuments, to look in the direction of the Monfurado or Ossa range for instance, and be aware that one looks in the same direction in which the ridge runs and in the same direction in which the sun rises in a extraordinary and liminar moment as the midsummer or midwinter solstice, and in the same direction in which behind the hills and over the ridge there lies another pair of enclosures, it's a great experience that amplifies to the scale of the limits of visibility the monumentality of the place.

This monumentality of the natural landscape suggest that it was essencial in rituals being practiced in the enclosures, probably being described and simbolized by ritual gestures and speeches. The evidence of the astronomical alignments linked to the landscape suggests that the rituals were calendrical and that they celebrated the renovation of time and the cosmos and that they probably occurred at sunrise or sunset in moments of season change, mostly in solstices. Also, it's probable that the rituals occurred in periods of full moon when it rises and sets at the same moment and in the opposite direction of the sunset and sunrise, which would have being added to the importance of the natural orientation of the ridges and would explain the existence of lunar alignments.

Calendrical rituals "can be said to impose cultural schemes on the order of nature. These cultural schemes may attempt to influence or control nature, as when rites adress the amount of rain or the fertility of the land, or they might simply try to harmonize the activities and the attitudes of the human community with the seasonal rythms of the environment and the larger cosmos." (Catherine Bell, 1997)

The available archaeological evidence about the enclosures has allowed to advance the hypothesis of   its builders had been pastoralits of sheep and goat (Calado, 1997b; np1); the calendrical rituals could have been related with the pastoral activities of the peoples in the landscape.

The overlaying of temporal and spatial limits that can be experienced in the enclosures, materialized in associations between the celestial and terrestrial landscape, is in my oppinion synthomatic; most probably it reflects one of the aspects of the rituals and the neolithic monumentalisation of this region, namely the definition and negotiation of territorial and ritual limits by the integration of culture and nature. Some of the aspects that contribute to this interpretation are the form in which the monuments seems to dispute the architecture, the basins of streams and great rivers, the positioning in relation to the Monfurado hills and the Ossa range and the due privileges over the landscape particularities.

4. The context

Since the first discoveries of megalithic enclosures and menhirs in Portugal in the 1960's until the end of the 1980's, the construction of open (non funerary) megalithic monuments was considered a phenomenen of the Late Neolithic.   However, the archaeological research in the monuments of the Monfurado hills and the region of Reguengos de Monsaraz during the 1990's has allowed scholars to view the creation of these monumental groups in the Early to Middle Neolithic period, a period prior to the construction of passage graves.

In the Monfurado group, it is necessary to allow for some diachrony: the system of monuments described were certainly not constructed over a single period.   They were probably conceived initially in relation to a so-called 'virgin' landscape and later on, in relation to the earlier monuments and settlements in the landscape.   I believe it probable that the building of the later monuments began only when the earlier were already abandoned in terms of ritual activities or that the creation of the new monuments were responsible for the abandonment of the old.

It is possible that the symbolism of the ridges lasted during the phase of enclosure building, probably with transformations in the way the system was understood and reproduced but always revolving around the same central theme.   It is significant that the passage graves in the region are not sited with any apparent significance in denoting the ridge-astronomical directions system, indicating perhaps, the cultural decadence from the Middle Neolithic of the ideology that sustained it.   Whether this system is the creation of the Neolithic of the region, or if it is rooted in earlier culturalization of this landscape remains an interesting question.

5. Bibliography

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Bell, C. (1997) - Ritual: Perspectives and dimensions. New york: OUP

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Calado, M. (1997b) - "Cromlechs Alentejanos e Arte Megalítica". Actas do III Colóquio Internacional de Arte Megalítica. La Coruña: Museo Arqueolóxico e Histórico. pp 287-297

Calado, M. (2000a) - "Neolitização e megalitismo no Alentejo Central: uma leitura espacial. Actas do III Congresso de Arqueologia Peninsular. (Vila Real)

Calado, M. (2000b) - "O Recinto megalítico de Vale Maria do Meio (Évora, Alentejo)". Muitas antas, pouca gente ? - Actas do I Colóquio Internacional sobre Megalitismo (Reguengos de Monsaraz, Outubro de 1996). Trabalhos de Arqueologia, 16. Lisboa: IPA. pp. 167-182

Calado, M. (2001) - Da serra d'Ossa ao Guadiana: um estudo de pré-história regional. Trabalhos de Arqueologia, 19. Lisboa: IPA.

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Calado, M. e Sarantopoulos, P. (1995) - "Cromeleque de Vale Maria do Meio (Évora, Portugal): Contexto Geográfico e Arqueológico". Rubricatum Revista del Museu de Gavà, Actas do I Congrés del Neolitic a la Peninsula Ibérica, Vol. 2, Gavà-Bellaterra. pp. 493-503

Carvalhaaes, P. (1421) "Doação de terras para usufructo aos pobres da pobre vida, na serra de Montemuro. O Castello de Giraldo Sem Pavor." in Gabriel Pereira: Documentos Históricos da Cidade de Évora. Lisboa: INCM, 1998. pp. [247]-[248]

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Gomes, M.V. (1997a) - "Cromeleque dos Almendres: Um dos Primeiros Grandes Monumentos Públicos da Humanidade" in Sarantopoulos, 1997 (ed.) pp.25-38

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Gomes, M.V. (1997c) - "Estátuas-menires antropomórficas do Alto-Alentejo. descobertas recentes e problemática." Actas do III Colóquio Internacional de Arte Megalítico. La Coruña: Museo Arqueolóxico e Histórico. pp. 255-288

Heggie, D.C. (1981) - Megalithic Science. London: Thames & Hudson

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Norberg-Schulz (1971) - Existence, space and architecture. London: Studio Vista

Penny, A. e Wood, J.E. (1973) - "The Dorset Cursus complex - a Neolithic astronomical observatory ?", Archaeol. J. 130, pp. 44-76

Pina, H.L. (1971) - "Novos Monumentos Megalíticos do Distrito de Évora". Actas do II Congresso Nacional de Arqueologia, Vol. I. Coimbra. pp. 151-161

Pina, H.L. (1976) - "Cromlechs und Menhire Bei Évora in Portugal". Madrider Mitteilungen, 17. Heidelberg. pp.9-20

Ruggles, C. L. N. (1998) - "Astronomy and Stonehenge". In Cunliffe, B. e Renfrew, C. (eds.), 1998

Sarantopoulos, P. [ed.] (1997) - Paisagens arqueológicas a Oeste de Évora. Évora: CME

Tilley, C. (1994) - A phenomenology of landscape: places, paths and monuments.