university of texas press heraldry for the dead memory identity and the engraved stone plaques of neolithic iberia sep 2008

Th eir hypnotically repetitive designs, the eyes that stare out from some of them, and their compositional standardization have intrigued pre-historians for over a century Figure I.1. D

her aldry for the dead

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her aldry for the dead

Memory, Identity, and the Engraved Stone Plaques of Neolithic Iberia

katina t lillios

university of texas press

Austin

Th is book has been supported by an endowment dedicated to classics and the ancient world and funded by the Areté Foundation; the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; the Dougherty Foundation; the James R Dougherty, Jr

Foundation; the Rachael and Ben Vaughan Foundation; and the National Endowment for the Humanities Th e endowment has also benefi ted from gifts

by Mark and Jo Ann Finley, Lucy Shoe Meritt, the late Anne Byrd Nalle,

and other individual donors.

Copyright © 2008 by the University of Texas Press

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

First edition, 2008 Requests for permission to reproduce material from

this work should be sent to:

Permissions University of Texas Press P.O Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html

Th e paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lillios, Katina T., 1960–

Heraldry for the dead : memory, identity, and the engraved stone plaques

of neolithic Iberia / Katina T Lillios — 1st ed.

p cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 978-0-292-71822-7 (cloth : alk paper)

1 Neolithic period—Iberian Peninsula 2 Plaques, plaquettes—Iberian Peninsula

3 Burial—Iberian Peninsula 4 Antiquities, Prehistoric—Iberian Peninsula

5 Iberian Peninsula—Antiquities I Title.

gn..il 2008 936.6—dc22 2008017086

For Morten, who nourished, for Rasmus, who clarifi ed, and for my father, who accepted And for my mother, who did not live to see

its completion, but who believed.

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c on t e n ts

acknowledgments i xintroduction 1

1 themes 7

2 variations 3 8

3 biogr aphies 76

4 agency and ambiguity 1 1 4

5 an iberian writing system 1 4 1

6 memory and identity in neolithic iberia 1 70

notes 1 7 7bibliogr aphy 1 8 1illustr ation credits 201

index 2 0 7

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ac k now l e d g m e n ts

That a manuscript on the engraved plaques

of Iberia now faces me is a mystery almost as perplexing as the engraved plaques themselves Th ree major sources of assistance and inspiration deserve my heartfelt thanks: fi rst, the museums, granting agencies, and educational institutions that provided generous fi nancial and institutional support; second, my colleagues and students, who took part in countless conversations, discussions, and exchanges about ideas developed in this book; and third, my intellectual “ancestors”—former teachers and advisors

Th e Archaeological Institute of America awarded me an Archaeology of gal Grant in 2003 that allowed me to study and photograph hundreds of plaques found in the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia, the Museu do Carmo, and the Mu-seu Geológico in Lisbon In 2004 I received an Arts and Humanities Initiative grant from the University of Iowa, which funded the technical support that helped

Portu-produce and ultimately launch the electronic database of the plaques: the Engraved Stone Plaque Registry and Inquiry Tool (ESPRIT) ESPRIT constitutes the empirical

basis for the ideas in this work Th e University of Iowa Offi ce of the Vice President for Research provided support for the preparation of this manuscript

Th e actual creation of ESPRIT required a level of collaboration, generosity, and

collegiality that I fi nd both overwhelming and humbling I owe many people many thanks First I must thank my archaeology students from Ripon College, espe-cially Andrew Rich, who helped me photocopy and catalogue hundreds of plaques

on index cards in 2001 Little did they (or I) know where their eff orts would lead

Th e present state of ESPRIT, with records and images of over 1,300 plaques, is the

result of being granted access to and being able to photograph and/or reproduce hundreds of plaques found in museums throughout Portugal and Spain I wish to express my deepest gratitude to the many curators and archaeologists who allowed

me to study the plaques in their holdings or to study and photograph plaques from their excavations Th ey include Dr Luís Raposo, director of the Museu Nacio-nal de Arqueologia (Lisbon); Dr José Brandão, curator of the Museu Geológico (Lisbon); Dr Guillermo S Kurtz Schaefer, director of the Museo Arqueológico Provincial de Badajoz (Badajoz); Dra Carmen Cacho, curator at the Museo Ar-queológico Nacional (Madrid); Dr José Arnaud, director of the Museu do Carmo

ack now l e d g m e n t s(Lisbon); Dr António Carrilho, curator of the Museu Municipal de Lagos (Lagos);

Dr Diego Oliva Alonso, curator of the Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla (Seville);

Drs Miguel Lago and António Valera of Era-Arqueologia, S.A (Lisbon); and

Dr Rui Parreira of Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico (IPPAR, Faro) I am also grateful to many archaeologists who granted permission to repro-

duce images of plaques from their publications in ESPRIT: Dr António Carlos

Silva (IPPAR, Évora), Dr João Cardoso (Universidade Aberta, Lisbon), Dr tor Hurtado Pérez (Universidad de Sevilla), Dra Raquel Vilaça (Universidade de Coimbra), Dr Lars Larsson (University of Lund), Dr Manuel Calado (Univer-sidade de Lisboa), Dr João Ludgero Gonçalves (Museu Municipal de Cadaval), Dra Primitiva Bueno Ramírez (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares), and Dr Victor Gonçalves (Universidade de Lisboa) I owe special thanks to Dr Dirce Marzoli, director of the German Archaeological Institute, Madrid, for graciously allowing

Víc-me to reproduce many illustrations from the Leisners’ publications

I am also profoundly grateful for all the technical assistance over the years that

ultimately made ESPRIT a reality Jean Moore, Monika Pawlak, Angela Collins, and Meredith Anderson helped scan and prepare the plaque images for use in ES- PRIT Angela Collins also prepared some of the maps in this book Stephanie Ser-

lin and María Mercedes Ortiz Rodríguez translated German passages from the Leisners’ publications Sally Donohue helped set up the original Filemaker Pro ver-

sion of ESPRIT For the spatial analyses I carried out on the plaques, I am indebted

to Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) Michael Chibnik,

my colleague at the Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, generously

off ered advice on the statistical analyses that were conducted by UI graduate dent Erica Begun I owe huge thanks to the Academic Technologies team at the University of Iowa: Steven Bowers, Danny Novo, and especially Denny Crall—for

stu-bringing ESPRIT to life on the World Wide Web.

I wish also to thank those colleagues and friends who provided encouragement throughout this project’s genesis, off ered critical insights on ideas and methods, or pointed out useful bibliographic materials: Ana Cristina Araújo, Bettina Arnold, Paul Axelrod, Douglass Bailey, Elizabeth Barber, Nanette Barkey, Rui Boaventura, Primitiva Bueno Ramírez, Donald Crowe, James Enloe, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Antonio Gilman, Billy Graves, Elisa Guerra-Doce, Richard J Harrison, Adi Hast-ings, Paulo Heitlinger, Michael Herzfeld, Petya Hristova, Andy Jones, Evelyn Kain, Meena Khandelwal, Michael Kunst, Ana Cristina Martins, Lynn Meskell, Heather Miller, Teresa Orozco Köhler, Brent Peterson, Jeff rey Quilter, Caroline Read, James Sackett, Frank Salomon, Barbara Sässe, John Steinberg, Tom Wake, Birgit Wegemann, Estella Weiss-Krejci, and João Zilhão I am especially grateful

to those colleagues who read drafts of chapters of this book and off ered helpful suggestions: Th omas Charlton, Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Leonardo García San-juán, Mary Helms, and Robin Skeates Th e reviewers of this manuscript, Javier Urcid and John Papadopoulos, provided extraordinarily detailed suggestions and corrections to this text, which I have done my best to address Th e editorial staff of

ack now l e d g m e n t sthe University of Texas Press, particularly Jim Burr, Lynne Chapman, and Kathy Lewis, provided steady encouragement during this book’s gestation and did a tre-mendous job to improve the clarity and consistency of my writing Needless to say,

I assume full responsibility for any errors that remain

Many of my students at the University of Iowa have also traveled with me on this journey, and I appreciate all their help and intellectual insights along the way:

Erica Begun, Grant McCall, Alexander Woods, and Jonathan Th omas

At some point in writing this book, it occurred to me that its interdisciplinary content was in large part a product of my own undergraduate and graduate educa-tion, particularly my graduate training at Yale University At Yale I was encouraged

to read broadly and deeply, not only within anthropology but also in other plines My intellectual peregrinations took me to the Departments of Forestry and Environmental Studies, History of Art, and Geology and Geophysics—as well as

disci-to diverse anthropology classes For that privilege, I especially wish disci-to acknowledge Professors Harold Conklin, Michael Dietler, Robert Gordon, Frank Hole, Andrew Moore, Jerome J Pollitt, Garth Voigt (now deceased), and Timothy Weiskel

Finally, I owe special gratitude to my husband, Morten Schlütter, and our son, Rasmus I am blessed by their love, patience, good humor—and indeed their (now) shared appreciation of these tantalizing objects

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i n t roduc t ion

The engraved stone plaques of prehistoric Iberia are mind traps Th eir hypnotically repetitive designs, the eyes that stare out from some of them, and their compositional standardization have intrigued pre-historians for over a century (Figure I.1).

Discovered in hundreds of Late Neolithic (3500–2000 BC) burials out southwest Iberia (Figure I.2), the engraved plaques have enjoyed an enduring place in the scholarly imagination Th e nineteenth-century Portuguese medical doctor Augusto Filippe Simões (1878:53) wondered whether they might be “amulets

through-or insignias through-or emblems through-or cult objects.”  After the eminent Portuguese geologist Carlos Ribeiro showed Florentino Ameghino, the Argentine naturalist, some of the plaques at the Paris Exposition in 1878, Ameghino (1879:219) speculated that they represented “a complete system of ideographic writing that awaits decipherment and obscures facts of great importance.”  Th e Portuguese prehistorian Vergílio Correia (1917:30) argued that the plaques are “what they simply are—idols or icons

of prehistoric divinities.”  Th e Polish ethnologist Eugeniusz Frankowski (1920:23) believed that the plaques were not idols or divinities but representations of the dead To the Portuguese archaeologist Victor dos Santos Gonçalves (1999a:114), the plaques unquestionably depict the European Mother Goddess

For nearly twenty years I found the palm-sized plaques easy to ignore Th eir subtly engraved lines and their dark gray color hardly called out for attention, particularly when they were displayed in dimly lit museum cases When the oc-casional plaque did catch my eye I would, I confess, experience a brief fl icker of curiosity I recall one such moment in the summer of 1994 at the Museu Municipal

de Montemor-o-Novo, a small provincial museum in the Alentejo region of ern Portugal I was visiting the museum with my geologist collaborator Howard Snyder to examine the stone tools in its collection as part of our study of trade dur-ing the Late Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula We were particularly interested in stone tools made of amphibolite, a dark greenish-black metamorphic rock found in this region of Portugal After noticing a group of engraved plaques displayed next

south-to some amphibolite south-tools in the museum, we casually remarked that the plaques and the stone tools resembled each other in color, form, and size Howard even suggested that the plaques’ artists had represented the crystalline microstructure

f i g u r e i 1

Plaque from Olival da Pega (Évora, Portugal) Photograph by author,

courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia.

i n t roduc t ion

of amphibolite in the geometric designs of the plaques Th e hot Alentejo sun and hundreds of hours spent peering down a microscope at stone tools had clearly got-ten to him Howard needed a day at the beach, and I did not see myself as an “art and symbolism” person

All this changed, however, in the winter of 2000 My colleague Jonathan Haws

had kindly mailed me a new book, Reguengos de Monsaraz: Territórios megalíticos

(Gonçalves 1999a), summarizing Gonçalves’ thinking about the archaeology of the Reguengos de Monsaraz region, the heartland of amphibolite and of the engraved slate plaques Th e book sat unopened on my offi ce bookshelf for a few weeks, un-til I had time one evening to look at it Casually thumbing through the book, I saw familiar images—plans of megaliths, site distribution maps, and photographs

of undecorated handmade Neolithic pottery My calm was disrupted, however, when I reached the full-page color photographs of the engraved plaques Nestled

in my warm and cozy offi ce in Ripon, Wisconsin, while arctic winds howled side, I was stunned to see the individual incisions and delicate cross-hatchings that fi lled the designs For the fi rst time, I noticed the abrasions and scratches and the grooves in the plaques’ perforations left by their original drilling I could see where engravers had made mistakes and where they had corrected them I could identify plaques engraved in the same idiosyncratic style and possibly produced by

out-f i g u r e i 2

Region in southwest Iberia in which engraved plaques have been found.

i n t roduc t ionthe same engraver I saw beautiful plaques and strange plaques And for the fi rst time the plaques spoke to me While 5,000 years separate us from the world of Late Neolithic Iberians, there is something palpably accessible about the engraved plaques—at least under good light I was hooked.

Ultimately I was inspired to write this book Th is is a book about many things

It is above all about seeing, about seeing with new eyes, and, most importantly, about seeing with multiple eyes Writing the book has been—and I hope reading

it will be—a visually, intellectually, and emotionally stimulating exercise in prehending a body of material culture through a diverse array of theoretical lenses

ap-Th roughout it, I engage a range of epistemologies and methodologies in regard to the engraved plaques—critical historiography, formal analyses, experimental stud-ies, spatial analyses, and interpretative frameworks inspired by memory and vi-sual culture studies Th is study seeks to engage with what Michael Herzfeld (2001) has called the “militant middle ground” in anthropology, in which structure and agency, materialism and idealism, and humanism and scientism occupy a shared intellectual space Th us this book does not seek to contain the plaques in a seam-less explanatory package Th eories, I believe, should be tools that generate new questions, provoke new insights, and organize information Th ey are not intellec-tual straightjackets Many questions will remain unanswered, ambiguities will be identifi ed, and contradictions will be teased out One of my intentions is that this book, as well as the perspectives that it draws upon, will stimulate new pathways

of inquiry While this may be the fi rst book dedicated to the Iberian plaques, I tainly hope it will not be the last

cer-Although the Iberian plaques have been known for over a century and have been interpreted in a variety of ways, most theories about the plaques have been fi rmly lodged in idealism, an approach that seeks to explain human behavior and material culture through people’s shared values, beliefs, or religious practices (Aunger 1999)

Th e engraved plaques are found in burials and are decorated, which has led most archaeologists to apply idealist models that center on the religious practices and artistic traditions of prehistoric Iberians While many intriguing questions within this framework have been proposed (such as what the plaques may have depicted), many aspects of the plaques, particularly their material and social dimensions, have remained unaddressed How were the plaques made? How long did it take

to make one? Where were they made? How was their production and distribution organized? Were they the work of specialized artisans? Were they worn or used during a person’s life or were they made at the time of a person’s death? Are there meaningful patterns in their design? Are diff erent plaque types found in diff erent regions? How did making and using the plaques structure the lives of ancient Ibe-rians? Why, indeed, were they made at all?

Th is is also a book about identity and, specifi cally, the creation of identities ing a critical juncture in the history of the Iberian Peninsula In this book I take identity to be a “relational and sociocultural phenomenon that emerges and circu-lates in local discourse contexts of interaction rather than a stable structure located

dur-i n t roduc t dur-ionprimarily in the individual psyche or in fi xed social categories” (Bucholtz and Hall 2005:585–586) In other words, identity is not inherent in individuals or groups but

is the product of engagement, interaction, and ultimately the “social positioning of the self and other” (ibid.:586)

During the Late Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula powerful economic and social forces structured the creation of new identities Human populations were increasingly tethered to a residential base, an outcome of their intensifi cation

of agricultural production At the same time when this residential stability was emerging, however, we also see evidence for increased long-distance travel (at least

as experienced by some individuals and groups) to acquire important raw als from the Alentejo, such as amphibolite for axes and adzes, variscite for beads, and copper for tools and weapons I suggest that the polarization of experiences and knowledge, diff erentiating those who traveled from those who stayed closer to home, crystallized in new social identities I also argue that the encounters of those traders and travelers on the open plains of the Alentejo—coming from diverse re-gions of the peninsula, perhaps speaking diff erent (mutually unintelligible?) dia-lects, and competing for the valued resources of the Alentejo—further contributed

materi-to the emergence and materialization of social distinctions

Th e social landscape of the Late Neolithic, such as it was, also would have stigated profound changes in mnemonic practices in order for groups to maintain and legitimate rights to these economic and symbolic resources far from their resi-dential bases In fact, the material record of the Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula suggests that such transformations occurred—in the reuse of sacred objects, the circulation of the remains of the dead, the mimesis of ancestral landscapes, and the rituals that brought the living and dead together in liminal spaces that both ordered and transcended time, by mobilizing “deep time” (Boric 2003)

in-Th us this book is also about memory and about how people construct their pasts While memory studies are very much in vogue in academic circles, includ-ing archaeology (Herzfeld 2003; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003; Williams 2003), few archaeologists were concerned with memory when I fi rst began thinking seri-ously about the plaques But, in the delicately controlled lines and hatching of a plaque that so exquisitely preserve the careful handiwork of a person living 5,000 years ago, one cannot help experiencing, on an intimate level, a sense of shared humanity As part and parcel of recognizing that humanity comes an awareness that people of the past had their own pasts and their own stories about how they came to be, where they came from, and who they were related to Once I began to consider these dimensions of Neolithic lifeways, through the material qualities of the plaques, I could begin to ask new questions about the plaques and ultimately contemplate the possibility that they were memory aids, heraldry for the dead,

and indeed writing

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on e

t h e m e s

Ever since antiquarians began ing the engraved plaques in the nineteenth century, they have emphasized their homogeneity Indeed, the plaques are remarkably coherent in their form and de-sign Th e Portuguese prehistorian Vergílio Correia (1917:29) noted this nearly a hundred years ago, when he explained that relatively few plaques were published because they were so similar to one another However, most archaeologists prob-ably highlighted their similarity because they believed that the plaques were part

discover-of a singular ideological phenomenon As I discuss later in this chapter, gists had long thought the Iberian Peninsula was colonized in the Late Neolithic

archaeolo-by people from the eastern Mediterranean who came in search of metals and who brought their belief in a Mother Goddess religion with them Although modern dating systems do not support such an interpretation (nor are there any objects of east Mediterranean origin dating to this period in the Iberian Peninsula), the no-tion of a Mother Goddess has left a deep impression on the archaeological scholar-ship of the Iberian Peninsula

In this chapter I begin by summarizing what we know about the Iberian insula prior to the period of the engraved plaques as well as the social and po-litical landscape of the peninsula during their use Material culture helps us to understand the social and cultural behavior of ancient populations, but the social landscape of an ancient group of people constrains, shapes, and ultimately gives meaning to that material culture I then review the principal characteristics of the plaques’ formal and design features and outline their general similarities Finally, I provide an overview of previous scholarship on the plaques

Pen-t h e c u lPen-t u r a l se Pen-t Pen-t i ng

Beginning in the sixth millennium BC, during the period known as the Early Neolithic, human groups living on the Iberian Peninsula underwent a series of social and economic transformations stimulated by the introduction of plant and animal domesticates (Gilman and Th ornes 1985; Chapman 1990; Arias 1999; Bern-abeu Aubán and Orozco Köhler 1999; Jorge 2000; Kunst 2001) and marked ar-

t h e m e s

chaeologically in some regions by the appearance of cardial shell–decorated ics. Whether these transformations occurred as a result of colonization by peoples who traveled along the Mediterranean coast, the trade of foodstuff s without popu-lation movement, or some combination of these processes is vigorously debated (Zilhão 1993, 2001; Jackes et al 1997; Richards 2003; Peña-Chocarro et al 2005)

ceram-Th e speed of the uptake of domesticates is also disputed Some scholars envision

a long and gradual integration of domesticates by hunting and foraging peoples, lasting around 1,000 years João Zilhão (2001), however, has argued that, if only radiocarbon dates on short-life samples for Early Neolithic sites are taken into ac-count, this uptake actually took no more than six generations and thus was a fairly rapid process

Although the precise dates are still unclear, it appears that some centuries ter the appearance of domesticates human groups began to construct megalithic tombs to house their dead (Leisner and Leisner 1943, 1951, 1956, 1959; Leisner 1965, 1998) (Figure 1.1) As in earlier periods, they also used caves and rockshelters Some

af-of the earliest af-of these megalithic burials, such as Poço da Gateira (Évora), were individual inhumations without engraved plaques

Although animal herding and agriculture were practiced in many enclaves of the peninsula during the Early Neolithic, particularly in those landscapes not oc-cupied by hunters and foragers, it was not until the Late Neolithic that a fully agri-cultural and sedentary lifestyle was more fi rmly established It was also at this time that the fi rst engraved plaques were made, with the earliest dates for the plaques occurring between 3500 and 3000 BC (Gonçalves 1999a:116)

f i g u r e 1 1

Megalithic tomb of Gorafe (Granada, Spain) Photograph courtesy of Leonardo García Sanjuán.

t h e m e sDuring the Late Neolithic (3500–2000 BC) human communities farmed wheat and barley and supplemented their agricultural base by herding sheep, goat, cat-tle, and pigs Th ey also hunted wild game (such as boar and deer), gathered wild plants and plant products (such as acorns), fi shed, and collected shellfi sh, particu-larly along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts Th ey made their homes in caves, rockshelters, and open-air settlements, especially on hilltops at the confl uence of rivers Some of these hilltop settlements were walled and had circular/semicircular towers or bastions built into their walls (Cardoso 2002) Th ese sites include Zam-bujal (Sangmeister and Schubart 1981) (Figure 1.2) and Leceia in Portugal (Cardoso 1997) and Almizaraque (Delibes et al 1986), Los Millares (Molina and Arribas 1993), and Terrera Ventura (Gusi 1986) in Spain.

Most settlements were about 1 ha, with population estimates ranging from a dozen to over a thousand individuals Th ere are larger sites, however, such as Los Millares (5 ha), and some exceptionally large sites, many along the Guadiana River

on the border between present-day Portugal and Spain Th ese include Perdigões in Portugal (16 ha) (Lago et al 1998), San Blas in Spain (30 ha) (Hurtado Pérez 2004), Ferreira do Alentejo in Portugal (50 ha) (Arnaud 1993), La Pijotilla in Spain (80 ha) (Hurtado Pérez 1987), and the largest yet known, Marroquíes Bajos in Spain

f i g u r e 1 2

Zambujal (Lisbon, Portugal) Photograph by Michael Kunst, courtesy of German

Archaeological Institute, Madrid.

t h e m e s

(113 ha) (Zafra et al 1999) Pedro Díaz-del-Río (2004) hypothesized that the size diff erences among these sites might be explained by their diff erent histories of fu-sion/fi ssion cycles so characteristic of segmentary societies Other scholars, such as Susana Oliveira Jorge (2003) and José Enrique Márquez Romero (2006), have ques-tioned the monolithic designation of these sites as settlements Th ey suggest that the symbolic and phenomenological qualities of these sites should be addressed, such as how they structured vision and visibility, constrained human actions, and delimited space

As with Early Neolithic populations, Later Neolithic peoples in the Iberian Peninsula buried their dead collectively in caves and rockshelters Th ey also began

to house their dead in rock-cut tombs, corbel-vaulted tombs (tholoi), and passage graves (Figure 1.3) Hundreds of these tombs dot the Portuguese and Spanish coun-tryside, though their largest concentrations are in the northwestern and southern regions of the peninsula Some areas are so densely fi lled with these tombs—such

as the Alentejo province of southern Portugal—that archaeologists have

tradition-f i g u r e 1 3

Megalithic tombs of the Iberian Peninsula a, Th olos tomb of La Pijotilla (Badajoz, Spain)

b, Passage grave of Cueva de La Pastora (Sevilla, Spain).

t h e m e sally viewed them as landscapes of the dead or ancestral geographies Nonetheless, recent research has indicated that residential occupations are sometimes associ-ated with these burials or are within a few kilometers (Gonçalves 2000; Boaven-tura 2001) Th ese later tombs, unlike earlier tombs, generally had passages that allowed for repeated access to the dead Richard Bradley (1998) has termed these

“open graves” and has suggested that the construction of these monuments signals

a change toward ancestor worship

Funerary rites during this period included both primary burials and the ondary treatment of the corpse (Gonçalves 1999a, 1999b) In the case of secondary burials, clusters of bone groups (such as crania or long bones) were buried together

sec-At the passage graves of Perdigões, Portugal, and La Pijotilla, Spain, for example, cranial bones were generally found along the walls of the chamber (Lago et al

1998:79; Hurtado Pérez et al 2002) Th e bones and artifacts found with these dead are often colored with ochre Fires were sometimes set within the tomb chamber, probably to purify the interior of the tomb (Rojo-Guerra and Kunst 2002) Off er-ings were placed with the deceased, some of which were especially made to accom-pany the dead Th ese included polished stone axes and adzes (which are regularly found unused), fl int blades, arrowheads, stone beads, globular ceramics (which are generally undecorated but sometimes have ocular motifs), stone and bone cylindri-cal idols (also sometimes incised with ocular motifs), and engraved slate or schist plaques

In the Iberian Peninsula, as in other regions of Europe, megaliths have long biographies Some have continued to be used in recent times as Christian cha-pels (for example, São Dinis and São Brissos in Portugal), pig sties, and chicken coops (Leisner and Leisner 1959:167, 319–320) In central and northwestern Iberia megaliths are regularly found with Early Bronze Age deposits At the Anta 2 do Couto da Espanhola in Portugal, Late Neolithic and Bronze Age artifacts attest

to such an enduring use (Cardoso et al 2000) Similarly, menhir fragments were sometimes incorporated in passage graves, as at Vale de Rodrigo 2 (Évora) (Lars-son 2001) Th e building of annexes is another feature of Iberian megalithic sites

Th e sites of Comenda and Farisoa, Portugal, both began as a passage grave (anta

in Portuguese) and later had a tholos annexed (Leisner and Leisner 1951: Est X and XIV; Gonçalves 1999a:18–19) (Figure 1.4) At the burial complex of Olival da Pega 2 (OP2) (Évora), Gonçalves (1999a:90–111) documented similar rebuildings

Th e fi rst monument constructed was a large passage grave (OP2a), with 16 m of its corridor preserved After OP2a was built, the tholos OP2b was annexed Changes were made during the construction of OP2b, and stones were removed from the original passage grave, presumably to facilitate access Following this, another tho-los (OP2d) was added to the other side of the passage of OP2, and a microtholos (OP2e) was annexed to OP2d Th e fi nal funerary deposit (OP2c) was annexed to the southern end of the complex

Th e variability in tomb types; the size, location, and visibility of these tombs;

the number of individuals buried within them; and the quantity and quality of

t h e m e s

goods found with these individuals all suggest that Late Neolithic societies in the Iberian Peninsula diff erentiated their members For example, at the megalithic cemetery/settlement site of Los Millares, Spain, the tombs with the highest pro-portion of prestige goods were located closest to the settlement (Chapman 1990)

Th ose individuals buried within some of the larger megaliths, such as the Anta Grande do Zambujeiro (Évora) in Portugal (Kalb 1981; Silva and Parreira 1990) (Figure 1.5), with orthostats 6 m high, were likely of a higher status than those housed in smaller megaliths It is interesting to note, however, that often the larg-est and most monumental megalithic chambers do not seem to have been primar-ily used as burial chambers Th is is the case at a number of monuments in southern Spain, such as Menga, La Pastora, Matarrubilla, and El Romeral (Leonardo García Sanjuán, personal communication, 2007)

Th e archaeological record of the Late Neolithic of Iberia has both direct and indirect evidence for violent confl ict (Kunst 2000) Th e construction of elaborate systems of fortifi cation with bastions, sometimes involving multiple lines of dry-stone walls (such as at Los Millares and Zambujal), suggests a need for defense and heightened sociopolitical tensions Weaponry (such as copper daggers) and painted images of armed people in caves also suggest a militaristic social climate Direct evidence of violent confl ict has been documented in the burials at the Hipogeo

de Longar and at San Juan ante Portam Latinam in Spain At the Hipogeo de Longar (a tomb in which at least 112 individuals of diff erent ages and sexes were buried with few grave goods) 4 individuals were found with arrowheads embedded

in their skeletons At San Juan ante Portam Latinam 9 out of the 289 individuals discovered had arrowheads in them (Vegas et al 1999)

At the end of the Late Neolithic, at about 2000 BC, a signifi cant social rupture occurred in the Iberian Peninsula Communities living in western and eastern Ibe-ria began to develop along somewhat diff erent evolutionary trajectories (Gilman

f i g u r e 1 4

Megalithic tombs with annexes a, Farisoa (Évora, Portugal), Anta 1 and tholos

b, Comenda (Évora, Portugal), Anta 2 and tholos.

t h e m e s1987) Th ese divergent trajectories were likely structured by the distinctive envi-ronmental regimes of Iberia: western Atlantic and more humid Iberia vs eastern Mediterranean and more arid Iberia Scholars such as Antonio Gilman (1987) and Almudena Hernando Gonzalo (1997) have suggested that in those arid regions of Iberia, where it was riskier to farm and where some form of water management or irrigation of land was likely practiced, aggrandizing individuals had more oppor-tunities to establish permanent control over agricultural systems and to emerge as elites with political, economic, and ideological power than in more humid zones

Th us we see in the Early Bronze Age of eastern (and southern) Iberia an expansion

of many of the salient features of the earlier third millennium, such as metallurgy, social inequality, and warfare (Díaz-del-Río and García Sanjuán 2006)

Th e archaeological evidence for the Early Bronze Age (2000–1500 BC) is tively poor for western Iberia, where the engraved plaques are found But what

rela-we know suggests that most settlements rela-were abandoned and new and unfortifi ed sites, such as Agroal (Lillios 1993a), were established Th ese sites were also more ephemeral and less variable in size and structure than earlier Late Neolithic settle-

f i g u r e 1 5.

Anta Grande do Zambujeiro (Évora, Portugal).

t h e m e sments Changes in burial practices accompanied these shifts in settlement pattern

Individual burials became the new norm, perhaps refl ecting a social order in which the memory of individuals took precedence over the memory of groups Over-all, less energy was invested in burial monuments and mortuary ritual activity

Other indicators of social organization provide further evidence of a major social transformation during this time Long-distance exchange connections were largely discontinued; for example, items made of ivory and ostrich eggshell were no longer being acquired from North Africa Th e production of craft specialist goods also declined; ceramics were largely undecorated and poorly fi red and appear to be of local production, and fl aked stone tools became quite rare Th e few copper objects (awls, fi shhooks, axes) of the period are the only evidence of specialized craft ac-tivities for the Early Bronze Age of western Iberia

Th e causes of these discontinuities are unclear, but they could well be related

to climatic and environmental changes that are documented for the third nium BC, social confl ict, and/or a realignment of the political order toward more decentralized and more egalitarian polities (Lillios 1993b) Clearly, a great deal

millen-of research remains to be done on this critical transformation in Iberian history

Scholarship in the Early Bronze Age of western Iberia is relatively sparse because (in addition to the poor preservation of settlements) the material culture of the period is largely aniconic, and undecorated and highly fragmented ceramics of this type are more diffi cult to date and seriate Th is paucity of iconographically rich material culture is perhaps one of the most salient diff erences between the Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age of western Iberia

Archaeologists have excavated these intriguing objects from over two hundred burials in the southwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula, from the Lisbon area

in Portugal to Huelva in Spain Th ey are most densely concentrated, however, in the Portuguese district of Évora (Figure 1.6) Th ey have been recovered in all tomb types used by Late Neolithic populations, including megaliths, caves, rockshelters, rock-cut tombs, and tholoi (Figure 1.7)

In these burials the engraved plaques are associated with undecorated pottery,

fl int blades, and unused polished stone tools Some tombs contained rich troves of plaques For example, the large passage grave of Anta Grande do Olival da Pega

f i g u r e 1 6.

Distribution of sites where plaques have been found and frequency of plaques per site Map produced by Jerry Mount (University of Iowa, Department of Geography) and author.

t h e m e s

(Évora) had 134 plaques (Leisner and Leisner 1951:240), and the tholos of Escoural (Évora) had 167 plaques, the largest number yet found in a single tomb (Santos and Veiga Ferreira 1969) However, some tombs that are contemporary to these had none (Gonçalves 2003a) Th is variability in the number of plaques among tombs was also shared by the individuals buried in these tombs, as not all people were buried with plaques For example, at the site of Cabeço da Arruda 1 (Lisbon) the minimum number of individuals buried was 19, yet only 11 plaques were recovered (Spindler 1981:224; Silva 1999:356–357)

Th e association of plaques with individuals within these tombs is often poorly documented Plaques discovered with a preserved skeleton are found on the de-ceased’s chest or side (Gonçalves 1999b:87) To date, very few plaques have been found in association with a skeleton that has been aged or sexed One of the only cases is from the recently excavated tomb of Monte Canelas (Faro) Here there is

a reasonably secure association between a female skeleton and an engraved plaque (Parreira 2005)

Although determining the association between individuals and plaques has been hampered by the long histories of these tombs, we have at the artifi cial cave

of Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon) an intriguing spatial patterning of the plaques and a group of crania (Leisner et al 1969) Th e engraved plaques from this site (totaling 23) were found in the same chamber with a concentration of skulls (Figure 1.8)

Th is sector of the cave (the western chamber or Westkammer) is also the oldest

Th e central cluster of crania in the Westkammer, in the oldest and most sible part of the tomb, strongly suggests that it was an ancestral focal point Th e spatial association of the engraved plaques with these skulls also suggests that these plaques were linked to a founding or ancestral group at this site

inacces-f i g u r e 1 7.

Contexts in which engraved plaques have been found.

t h e m e sRarely, plaques (principally as fragments) are found at settlements Th ese settle-ments include Espargueira (Lisbon), Carnaxide (Lisbon), Vila Nova de São Pedro (Santarém), and Zambujal (Lisbon) (Spindler 1981:224–225).

Th ere are well over two thousand (and perhaps close to four thousand) engraved plaques housed in museums and collections throughout Spain and Portugal (Lil-lios 2004a), the result of hundreds of excavations carried out by countless prehis-torians over more than a century A few plaques are presently housed in museums outside the Iberian Peninsula (such as the British Museum, the Ashmolean, and the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in the United Kingdom), and some have even made their way into private collections (Hibbs 1993) Judg-ing from the number of plaques that have been published annually over the past few years, I estimate that archaeologists discover approximately fi fty plaques each year in new excavations Based on my studies of plaques in Portuguese museums (discussed in more detail later in this chapter), many hundreds of plaques remain unpublished and uncatalogued Th erefore the true number of plaques produced in prehistory is likely to have been in the thousands

In order to consider the intensity of the production of engraved plaques, we also need to consider the duration of time during which they were made Unfor-tunately, however, archaeologists have had considerable diffi culty in determining their precise dating and chronology, for a number of reasons First, burials in later prehistory were repeatedly reused, sometimes until the Early Bronze Age (as dis-cussed above) Th erefore artifacts and skeletal remains are often found disturbed

Furthermore, the acidic soils of the Alentejo (where most of these burials are cated) do not regularly preserve skeletal remains, so direct dating of associated

lo-f i g u r e 1 8.

Praia das Maçãs (Lisbon, Portugal), showing the relationship between plaques

and crania in the Westkammer.

t h e m e sindividuals is diffi cult Many plaques come from old excavations in the late nine-teenth and early twentieth century, which also accounts for the rarity of good con-textual information on artifacts and skeletal remains associated with the plaques

Finally, it is clear that some of the plaques were curated and recycled Fragments of plaques are occasionally found reused as pendants in Late Neolithic burials (which

I discuss more fully in Chapters 2 and 3); thus their life histories must be seen as extending beyond their initial manufacture, use, and burial

Th e few dates that we have for associated skeletal and other material remains suggest that the plaques were used between 3500 and 2500 cal BC (Gonçalves 1999a:117) In terms of cultural phases, they were used well into the Beaker period (the second half of what is often known as the Copper Age), as the site of Pedra Branca (Setúbal, Portugal) demonstrates (Veiga Ferreira et al 1975)

For the same reason that we have few absolute dates for the plaques, we are also

a long way from proposing a relative chronology We cannot say which plaques were the earliest and which were the latest Indeed, the large regional extent of the plaques’ distribution forces us to consider the possibility of multiple origins for the manufacture of the plaques, which may have been roughly contemporary Given the abundance of plaque types in the Alentejo region and local availability of slate

in this region (Figure 1.9), it is likely that one of the possibly multiple “birthplaces”

of the plaques was in fact the undulating plains of the Portuguese Alentejo

a h is t or y of pl aqu e s c hol a r sh i p

For over a century the mysterious stone plaques of Neolithic Portugal and Spain have engaged the minds and imagination of countless prehistorians Research has revolved around many of the same questions that stimulate most archaeological research, including inquiries into origins, chronology, classifi cation, function, and meaning In plaque studies these questions have taken the following specifi c forms:

1 Origins: Where did the inspiration for the plaques and their imagery nate? Were the plaques based on east Mediterranean prototypes, or were they inspired by local Iberian visual culture?

origi-2 Chronology and evolution: To what periods do the diff erent plaque types date? How did the plaques change over time? Did the plaques begin as represen-tational art, depicting objects or beings, and become more abstract, geometric, and schematic over time? Or did they begin as geometric or abstract objects and take on more overtly representational qualities over time?

3 Classifi cation: How can the plaques be meaningfully classifi ed and grouped?

4 Representation, function, and meaning: Did the plaques’ form and design depict things, such as axes or palm trees, divinities, or the dead? Were they

t h e m e sreligious idols? Were they doubles that housed the soul of the dead? Were they emblems of ethnic groups?

Structuring this historiographic narrative have been tensions and debates among scholars working in diff erent intellectual and national traditions Spanish and Por-tuguese scholars have tended to emphasize the unique qualities of the plaques, interpreting them as historical or art-historical documents North European and American scholars have generally approached the plaques as material expressions of human social and cultural behavior and have sought ethnographic parallels to un-derstand this behavior What is most striking about the historiography of plaque research, however, is the endurance of the view that they represent the Mother Goddess While challenges to this model have appeared regularly in the litera-ture, they have not had much impact on the fi eld Th ese alternative models include the plaques as writing systems (Ameghino 1879), as representations of the dead (Frankowski 1920), and as heraldry (Lisboa 1985)

mu-Th e creation of academic societies and museums provided the institutional foundations for the study of the Iberian past In 1848, for example, the Comissão dos Trabalhos Geológicos was created in Portugal (Santos 1980:261) Th is society, one of the fi rst of its kind in Europe, sponsored the important work of the geolo-gist Carlos Ribeiro, who was to later write about the plaques (Ribeiro 1878–1880)

In 1863 the Associação dos Arquitectos Civis e dos Arqueólogos Portugueses was formed, which later founded the Museu do Carmo (Serrão 1983:195) In 1867 the Museo Arqueológico Nacional was founded in Madrid In 1893 José Leite de Vas-concelos founded the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia in Lisbon (Serrão 1983:196), which now houses the largest collection of plaques in the world

Th e dissemination of archaeological research to other European scholars was facilitated by the creation of archaeological journals and the hosting of academic

conferences In Spain the Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos was published

beginning in 1871 (Díaz-Andreu 1997:13) Th e Portuguese journals Revista de Guimarães and O Arqueólogo Português published their fi rst issues in 1884 and

1895, respectively In 1880 the Ninth International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology was held in Lisbon (Santos 1980:258) At this congress a large number of prehistorians fi rst came to know about the archaeology of Iberia

t h e m e s(Veiga 1887:429–430; Déchelette 1908:219) Indeed, after attending the congress, the French prehistorian Émile Cartailhac glorifi ed the Iberian Peninsula as “the promised land of prehistorians” (Siret 1913:ix).

During this fertile and dynamic period engraved plaques from Portugal and later from Spain were fi rst recovered and noted by prehistorians. Th e fi rst plaques

were published and illustrated in 1878 in Introducção á Archeologia da Peninsula Iberica, the oldest summary of Iberian prehistory, written by the Portuguese medi-

cal doctor Augusto Filippe Simões (1835–1884) Th e approach of Simões, like many early writers on the plaques, was largely descriptive and comparative, and he of-fered a range of possible interpretations To him, they could be “amulets or insig-nias or emblems or cult objects” (Simões 1878:53); he was not committed to one in-terpretation or another Th e small number of plaques known at that time (Simões mentioned twelve, all from Portugal) certainly justifi ed his caution Simões sought ethnographic comparisons for the plaques, such as the hafted axes with perfora-

tions from Pennsylvania described in Reliquiae Aquitanicae (Lartet and Christy

1875) Simões concluded, though, that the plaques could not have served such a function, because they were too fragile With respect to their dates, Simões could only state that the plaques must have dated to the time of megalith building in the Iberian Peninsula Th e plaques known at the time were all geometric in design and none were overtly anthropomorphic, so there was no mention of their being deities

or Mother Goddesses—interpretations which came to play a dominant role in later plaque studies

Although Simões adopted a cautious scientism with respect to the plaques and other archaeological material he discussed, he was more passionate about his mo-tivations for writing the book and about the role of archaeology in the intellectual development of his country In his prologue he described the relative superiority of the Spaniards in understanding and appreciating archaeology (Simões 1878:3) He lamented:

By comparison with other cultivated nations, conditions in Portugal, where this issue is concerned, are not favorable Only the initiative of governments, com-bined with the dedication of those who are not indiff erent to the progress of science and the past and future of humankind, can raise us from our current disillusionment/apathy (ibid.:10)

It thus seemed to Simões (ibid.:iii) an “opportune time to contribute to the common progress of Spain and Portugal.”  In this quotation Simões may be re-vealing his sympathies toward a pan-Iberian nationalism, a movement that favored the unifi cation of Portugal and Spain along the lines of what Italy and Germany had achieved in 1870 and 1871, respectively (Díaz-Andreu 1997:15)

At about the same time, the Argentine paleontologist Florentino Ameghino (1854–1911) included a discussion of the Portuguese plaques in his study of the pre-history of La Plata, Argentina (Ameghino 1879, 1880) Ameghino saw clear paral-

t h e m e slels between the engravings on the Portuguese plaques and those on stone plaques from the Río Negro region of Patagonia.

We fi nd these signs to be absolutely identical to those that are found on some slate plaques of Portugal that the distinguished Portuguese geologist don Carlos Ribeiro has informed us about (Ameghino 1880:273)

Ameghino also saw in the abundant inscriptive art of the Americas, including the engraved plaques of Argentina (and by implication the plaques of Portugal),

“a complete system of ideographic writing that awaits decipherment and obscures facts of great importance” (Ameghino 1879:218–219). No prehistorian followed up

on Ameghino’s intriguing suggestion, and few scholars even seemed to know about

it Ameghino was likely ignored by Iberian archaeologists at the time because of his controversial support for the idea that the world’s fi rst mammalian faunas (in-cluding the Hominidae) were derived from Patagonian marsupials (Baffi and Tor-res 1997)

Th e geologist Carlos Ribeiro (1813–1882) briefl y described the plaques in cia de algumas estações e monumentos pré-históricos (1878–1880) Like Ameghino, he

Notí-saw similarities between the Portuguese plaques and the slate plaques found in Argentina (Ribeiro 1878–1880:51) Ribeiro was undecided as to whether they were amulets or adornment (ibid.:50), and he did not off er an interpretation, though he suggested that the plaques probably had a restricted function owing to the fragility

of their raw material

Th e French prehistorian Gabriel de Mortillet (1821–1898) included an illustration

and brief description of a plaque in Musée préhistorique (Mortillet and Mortillet

1881) but off ered no interpretation of it Mortillet’s fellow countryman Émile

Car-tailhac (1845–1921) referred to the Iberian plaques in his important work Les âges préhistoriques de l’Espagne et du Portugal (Cartailhac 1886) He was the fi rst to note

the engraving styles of the plaques and particularly the diff erent styles represented among the plaques from the cave site of Casa da Moura, but believed that all the plaques were produced by a “sure and skillful hand” (ibid.:97). He also noted that the perforations on the plaques showed signs of wear, suggesting that the plaques were worn for a long time (ibid.:98) Cartailhac, like Ribeiro, was undecided as

to their function but believed that they had properties similar to those of objects

of adornment and symbols of power Like Simões, he employed an ethnographic approach and found comparable plaques made of slate both within Europe (from France) and in North America (from New Jersey) (ibid.:100)

Th e fi rst scholar to off er a major presentation and discussion of the Iberian plaques, including the fi rst maps plotting their distribution, was the Portuguese prehistorian Sebastião Philippes Martins Estácio da Veiga (1828–1891) Th rough

the publication of his four-volume opus Paleoethnologia: Antiguidades taes do Algarve: Tempos prehistoricos (Veiga 1886–1891), Estácio da Veiga played a

monumen-key role in late nineteenth century Portuguese archaeology He devoted a

chap-t h e m e ster to the plaques, which at the time numbered fi fty-six complete specimens and twenty-three fragments Like Simões, Estácio da Veiga is cautious and conserva-tive in interpreting the plaques, and his careful descriptions and lucid thoughtful-ness in pursuing various lines of inquiry give his work an air of modernity Th e plaques were clearly a source of nationalistic pride to Estácio da Veiga All the known plaques were found in Portugal, as he announced in the fi rst sentence of his chapter on the plaques: “Th is is the only country in Europe in which engraved slate plaques have yet been found” (Veiga 1887:429).

Estácio da Veiga made a number of key observations on the manufacture and life history of the plaques, many of which were not developed in later works For example, he seemed certain that a fl int blade was used to make the engraving, though no experiments appear to have been conducted to prove this Like Cartail-hac, whose work he cited, Estácio da Veiga observed the wear on their perforations and noted a range in wear: some plaques showed the original drilling grooves, while in others the wear from a cord was evident He also observed (ibid.:431) that each plaque was unique in its design and that the engraving styles were variable

Estácio da Veiga believed that the producers of the plaques did not invent their designs but imitated something that existed in nature or in industry that attracted their attention and taste Th e form of the triangle, for example, seemed to have an important symbolism, and he vaguely suggested that crystals could be their design source

Estácio da Veiga was aware of Ameghino’s 1879 work and of his suggestion that the Portuguese plaques might contain “hieroglyphs,” but he dismissed this idea and did not see such lines and points in the Portuguese plaques Estácio da Veiga complained that Ameghino did not publish images of the plaque he mentioned:

“Science needs the demonstration of direct proof ” (ibid.:448).

Estácio da Veiga also considered the source or inspiration for the Portuguese plaques, but unlike later authors he was reluctant to assume an eastern or external origin Indeed, he wrote that no symbol or artifact of Asian production had been found in any of the monuments (ibid.:444) In a passage characteristic of many late nineteenth century Portuguese scholars, in which nationalism and Portuguese

saudade (nostalgia) came together, Estácio da Veiga mournfully observed:

I believe there to be suffi cient basis to state that the slate plaques and their mental engraving had their origin in this venerable land, which for seven cen-turies has been called Portugal, and in which today art, suff ering a neglected dyspepsia, moves slowly along, almost inanimate and decrepit, toward all deca-dences in search of an epitaph (ibid.:444)

orna-Ex Oriente Lux, orna-Ex Oriente Mater

Until the late 1800s the engraved plaques, which were only known in Portugal, were largely viewed as an indigenous phenomenon No prehistorian argued for

t h e m e stheir being inspired by eastern sources Most writers focused on describing the plaques and on considering various aspects of their production, distribution, and dating and kept a variety of interpretative possibilities open A turning point in their study occurred with the work of French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan

(1857–1924) It was Morgan, in Recherches sur les origines de l’Égypte (Morgan 1897),

who fi rst explicitly—though casually—made a connection between the guese plaques and those from the east, specifi cally Egypt Morgan wrote about the similarities that he noted between engraved plaques found in Gébel-Tàrif and Beit-Allam in Egypt and those in Portugal Later prehistorians, such as Vergílio Correia (1921:75), acknowledged that Morgan was the fi rst to make this connec-tion Th e putative eastern origins of the Iberian plaques colored all later studies to

Portu-a grePortu-ater or lesser degree Th e notion that the plaques had exogenous sources was probably not entirely due to Morgan’s work, however, because diff usionism was the dominant explanatory model for culture change throughout late nineteenth/

early twentieth century archaeology.

In the late 1890s prehistorians also began to emphasize the religious and bolic dimensions of the Iberian plaques An important fi gure who contributed to this shift was the Portuguese ethnographer José Leite de Vasconcelos (1858–1941) (Figure 1.10) Vasconcelos fi rst wrote about the plaques in his magisterial three-

sym-volume opus As religiões da Lusitânia (Vasconcelos 1897, although he also referred to

them in Vasconcelos 1905, 1913) As in the case of Estácio da Veiga, the plaques were

a source of some pride for Vasconcelos, who wrote that the plaques constituted a notable particularity of “our” prehistoric archaeology (Vasconcelos 1897:155) When

he published As religiões, the plaques were still only known from Portugal.

Vasconcelos took a relatively systematic approach to the plaques and argued that three issues needed to be considered: (1) their location and frequency, (2) the nature of their raw material, and (3) their design, compared with other contempo-rary or neighboring objects (ibid.:158) He was a careful observer of the plaques and considered some aspects of their biography He noted, for example, that one plaque had been broken, refashioned into an axelike form, and reperforated (ibid.:166)

Like Estácio da Veiga, whom he cited, he also noted the variation in wear on the perforations and suggested that this was due to diff erences in the length of time that the plaques had been displayed (ibid.:160) Because of their fragility, all the plaques must have been used relatively infrequently and only on solemn occasions (ibid.:159–160) Also like earlier authors, Vasconcelos observed diff erences in the style of engraving He described the certainty of the hand that made a plaque from the site of Herdade da Ordem but also noted the “barbarism” of another plaque from the same site (ibid.:156–157)

Vasconcelos was an ethnographer of his time, however, and unilineal

evolution-ism was the dominant paradigm He was familiar with E B Tylor’s Primitive ture (1871) (Vasconcelos 1897:159) and was clearly sympathetic to Tylor’s theories on

Cul-the mentality of “primitive” (preliterate) peoples, for whom religion in general and animism in particular served to explain sleep, death, and dreams Th us, despite the

f i g u r e 1 10.

Caricature of José Leite de Vasconcelos (with engraved plaque hanging from his wrist)

by Francisco Valença, undated Courtesy of Museu Nacional de Arqueologia.