PERDIGÕES GLOBAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROGRAMME Project: OMPHALOS: ceremonial centralities in the Perdigões archaeological complex 2024 CAMPAIGN PRE-REGISTRATION FOR VOLUNTEERS   Applicants should indicate the participation period and send their CV and motivation letter to antoniovalera@era-arqueologia.pt by 30 April.   Participation periods: July 1st to 13th; July 15th to 27th. Conditions offered: accommodation, lunch, dinner, and…

Deciphering diet and dairy consumption in Recent Prehistoric Communities from Southern Iberia – An ICArEHB, FCT and Perdigões – Archaeological Complex collaboration The domestication of dairy ruminants in the Neolithic provided a novel food source, milk, that once transformed revolutionised human diets. Notwithstanding, the origins, spread, extent and role of dairy products in prehistoric communities…

“Monumentality in wood: a preliminary approach to timber circles of Late Prehistory in South Portugal” is a preliminary approach to monuments built in wood from the peninsular Late Prehistory, focusing on two unique cases: Outeiro Alto 2 and Timber Circle dos Perdigões. About the latter, available data up to 2022 are presented, with a reflection…

“Anthracological study of a Chalcolithic funerary deposit from Perdigões (Alentejo, Portugal): A new analytical methodology to establish the wood burning temperature” is an anthracological study of charcoals contained in the deposits of human cremation remains deposited in Pit 16 in the central area of Perdigões. With this study, the tree species used in cremations and…

“Tell me what you see: Late deposition of an atypical metallic artefact in Perdigões”, by Ana Catarina Basílio e António Carlos Valera, presents the deposition of a deformed metallic piece in the re-cutting of Ditch 7 in the Complex of Ditched enclosures of Perdigões. The filling of this reopening was done with the accumulation of…

An investigation related to funerary behaviors in Perdigões was recently published. By Nelson J. Almeida and António Valera, this study focuses, as the name suggests, on faunal remains associated with human cremations. Two chalcolithic pits (16 and 40) were studied, and the results obtained were compared with previously published data from anthropological analyses. The study…

Another monographic volume on the Perdigões has just been published, this time summarizing the work carried out by the University of Malaga on the North East Gate of the outer ditches (Sector L). This collaboration took place between 2008 and 2016.

The Perdigões project was present at the annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, held at the beginning of September in Budapest, with a communication on Tomb 3.

The Perdigões project participates, with a conference, in the series of seminars “Megalithic Autumn” organized by the GEA and the University of Granada, with the conference entitled “Diversification of funerary practices in the 3rd millennium BC: the depositions of cremations in Perdigões and Carrascal 2 (Porto Torrão ), South of Portugal”.

“Zooarchaeology as a proxy for social breakdown in Late Chalcolithic SW Iberia: insights from biometry, geometric morphometrics, diet, and animal mobility from Perdigões” is a new project to be developed in the context of the Perdigões Global Research Programme. This project, recently approved and financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the…

As part of the collaboration that has been developed by the Perdigões Project and the University of Kiel (Germany), a set of about 50 radiocarbon datings of Perdigões contexts will be carried out by this university until the end of 2022. The goals are to specify the chronology of the final stages of the Perdigões,…

The Perdigões Archaeological Complex, recently classified as a National Monument, has been under ongoing investigation for 25 years by the Global Archaeological Research Program (INARP) coordinated by ERA Arqueologia through its R&D area (NIA – Núcleo de Investigacão Arqueológica). Within the scope of this investigation, several collaborations have been made with national and international institutions…

Within the scope of the Extraordinary Financial Support for Multiannual Research Projects in Archaeology 2021, the project currently ongoing in Perdigões (Perdigões: prime and crisis of a large ditch enclosure – APOCRI-Perd) received the maximum funding, corresponding to 10 000€. According to the criteria established for the applications, this funding will be applied to a…

To be integrated in the exhibition “Ídolos. Olhares Milenares”, on display at the National Archaeology Museum during 2021, two shaped horse phalanges that were partially covered by intense concretions were cleaned and restored at the lab of the museum. The cleaning revealed that the eyes are represented in the decoration, in addition to other iconographic…

A new study on the fauna of Perdigões has been published. With regard to the study of the faunal assemblage of Ditch 7, a diachronic approach is made to all the fauna already studied and published in Perdigões (more than 3300 remains). For the first time, consumption trends (namely among domestic and wild animals) are…

The research partnership of the Perdigões project with the National University of Australia (as part of an international project on mobility) produced new results for the contexts of cremations in the central area. Several dozen individuals analyzed, through teeth and pars petrosa (a novelty in these approaches), revealed that the vast majority have local values,…

In July 2021, the 24th excavation campaign of the Global Research Program in the Perdigões Archaeological Complex (25th if we count on the 1997 diagnostic intervention – a quarter of a century, therefore) will take place between 5 and 31 July. This year we will continue with a reduced team due to the pandemic, but…

A new PhD project, developed by Cláudia Relvado, takes Perdigões as one of the major contexts of research.

Several iconographic elements from Perdigões (sixteen pieces in total) will be on display at the exhibition “Ídolos, Olhares Milenares”, to be inaugurated at the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia.