UISPP Congress
Session: "Monumental Questions: Prehistoric Megaliths, Mounds, and Enclosures"
Lisbon, Portugal | Monday | 4-9 September 2006

Abstract
Moon, Spring and Large Stones: Landscape and ritual calendar perception and symbolization
Catarina Oliveira | C. Marciano da Silva

Systematic surveys of megalithic sites, in recent decades in Central Alentejo, have resulted in the accumulation of empirical evidence suggesting good candidates for astronomical relevance, involving either the Sun or the Moon, or both.

The analysis of some of the sites is compatible with lunar observation and practices. In particular, the Megalithic Equinox appears to be related to the Spring Full Moon, and this seems to be well supported by the orientation of funerary megaliths, as a symbolic representation of resurrection, rebirth, or new life, at the onset of Spring.

It seems possible to recognise a local cultual practice, or celebration, of the equinox, by a prehistoric society "conscious of the celestial order". Further, recent surveys, following these suggestions, have resulted in the identification of several megalithic enclosures, and possible "sacred" landscape features observed from isolated menhirs, involving compatible and/or adjuvant interpretations. Additional plausibility is provided by the frequent presence of astral decorative motifs engraved on the stones.

From the evidence of a clear connection between the moon, landscape perception and ritual calendar, apparently first materialized in megalithic monuments, we start also to be sensitive to the identification of signs hidden in the collective memory of following generations across time, guided by the idea of the Moon as a symbolic representation of life.

Aware that the religious phenomenon has, at all times and places, revealed itself as an "inherited conglomerate", the present study tries to understand how man has appropriated the Moon and integrated it in magic-symbolic structures, mediating their relation with space and time, in the light of specific space-time contexts, movements of people groups, and syncretism and assimilation phenomena.

The investigation developed so far has unveiled relevant indications, not only in Central Alentejo, where the megalithic phenomena seems prominent, but also in other parts of the country, where that association - materialised in ancient places of devotion, rituals and liturgical practice - remains significant.

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