| Name: | Description: | Size: | Format: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 957.02 KB | Adobe PDF |
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The Upper Morgado shelter is a karst cavity located in the Nabão river valley whose
material culture is in many aspects associated to the dolmen world. This shelter was used and
reused in a long diachrony (since Neolithic times until the Early Bronze Age). Exchange and /or
Interchange is confirmed through the occurrence of some metal artefacts that observed a complete
set of relationships with items found travelling through the Portuguese Estremadura and Alentejo,
across borders to Almeria and as far France.
The upper Morgado shelter fi ts the purpose of a long-term study where the thesis that the funerary
features themselves travelled across borders as ideological exchange. Recent research found
several ritual actions regarding the systematic burial of individuals of both sexes and of all ages.
Since the primary burial, in an unstructured pit, that with time transforms itself into a Chalcolithic
ossuary; further complemented with vestigial nuclei of human bones from the Neolithic. Those
ossuaries were posteriorly displaced and containerised in a circular rock structure, with small
rock niche-ossuary structures containing a limited number of unstructured bones. All this material
culture behaviour results in the complex nature of this site.
Description
Keywords
shelter ossuary primary burial neolithic chalcolithic