Abstract
Central Portugal, delimited by the Douro river to the north and the Mondego to the south, is the second densest region of megalithic monuments in the country. The Neolithic archaeological record indicates seasonal transhumance between higher pastures in the summer and lower grounds in the winter. The monuments are found in lower ground and it has been suggested that they were built during the winter occupation of their surroundings. The astronomical orientation of their entrances lends further support to this hypothesis. A recent survey of the orientation of the chambers and corridors of these dolmens, conducted by the author, found good agreement with prior surveys, but also demonstrated that other interpretations are possible. This paper presents an update on the survey, including extra sites surveyed in the spring of 2011, as well as the GIS confirmation of all horizon altitudes that couldn’t be empirically measured. The megalithic nucleus of Carregal do Sal, on the Mondego valley, is then looked at in more detail. It is found that there is a preference for the orientation of dolmens towards Star Mountain Range in-line with the topographic arguments of landscape archaeology. In addition, it was found that the topography also marks the rise of particular red stars, Betelgeuse and Aldebaran, during the period of megalithic building, at the onset of spring marking the transition from low ground to the high pastures. This hypothesis finds further support from toponymic folktales that explain the origin of the name of the mountain range.
Highlights
The Mondego platform of central Portugal is bordered by the Central Massif to the southeast, the Marginal Massif to the west and northwest, and the Douro basin to the north
In the 1980s Michael Hoskin surveyed dolmens in this region of Portugal and concluded them to be loosely oriented towards sunrise/climb at the moment they were
The current and on-going research project was designed to expand on the measurements of Hoskin and reassess the data using up-todate methodological tools (Silva 2010)
Summary
During the spring of 2010, thirty-one dolmens of the Mondego platform were surveyed for the orientation of their entrances and/or corridors. Hoskin chose to measure the line defined by the middle point of the backstone (the stone opposite the chamber entrance) and the mid-point of the corridor (2001: 12) This survey purposefully decided to define this line differently in order to test for deviation due to differences in assumptions, as well as to go beyond this approach by measuring a maximum ‘window of visibility’ Objects lying on the celestial equator will have zero degrees of declination, whereas those at the celestial poles will have ninety (positive for north, negative for south) This simplifies the search for astronomical events along those orientations as well as allowing the comparison of monuments in different geographical regions, as the conversion takes care of the differences in latitude between the sites.. Illustrated as vertical dashed lines, are the declinations of the
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