![]() Map showing the movement of the passage grave tradition and its accompanying art Coincidentally, several burials within the passage and chamber areas were located next to these decorative stones (Obermaier 1924). Other architectural devices such as stone lintels, thresholds and stone pillars would have further restricted the view (Nash 2006b).Īt some point either during construction or more likely when in use, various chamber and passage stone uprights were adorned with engraved megalithic art and accompanied by painted Schematic imagery (Garcês et al. ![]() The constriction appears to be deliberate, restricting the view from the entrance area to the chamber. In the case of the Dolmen de Soto the passage/chamber appears to form a continuous galley which constricts halfway along the gallery towards the entrance ( Figure 1). The passage usually merges or connects with a defined chamber both elements made from stone uprights and stone roofing slabs. The generic passage grave architecture includes a round mound with an entrance or façade that leads to usually a long passage that is roughly orientated east-west, probably acknowledging the rising and setting of the sun at certain times of the year (Tilley 1991). The idea of building a ‘house’ for the dead appears to be a classic Neolithic trait (e.g. We do know that during the 4th and 5th millennium BCE passage grave building becomes a dominant architectural style and was probably a development from a previous eastern Mediterranean style (Joussaume 1985). ![]() We know that the Neolithic Revolution occurs in what is termed the ‘Fertile Crescent’ (Northern Israel, Syria and Turkey), around 10,000 BCE but in terms of understanding the development and tomb architecture and how it spread across Europe is still unclear (Whittle 1985, 2018). The origins of Neolithic tomb building in Mediterranean Europe is often difficult to trace. The passage as viewed from the chamber area Using a variety of modern scientific recording and sampling techniques, the project revealed a unique window onto the monument’s prehistoric ritual and symbolic past. During this 3000-year period many idiosyncratic changes to the architecture and burial practices occur, one being the incorporation of engraved and painted rock art (Shee-Twohig 1981 Nash 2006a, Nash 2020).īetween 20 and as part of a Junta de Andalucía-funded project, a Portuguese-Spanish-British team was commissioned to record the rock art within the Dolmen de Soto passage grave in Andalucía (Garcês et al. The majority of this monument type is found within western Atlantic Europe, from the Iberian Peninsula in the south to southern Sweden and Denmark in the north and appears to have been in use from the 5th to the 2nd millennium BCE. The entrance, passage and chamber elements are constructed using large rock boulder, known as uprights (also referred to as orthostats or peristaliths) sometimes deliberately shaped to fit a particular space within the monument. ![]() These elements are covered by a mound made of cairn and sometimes earth (or a combination of the two). The passage and chamber are usually covered by massive roofing stones. The architectural style is essentially an artificially constructed cave that includes an entrance/façade and a long passage that leads to a sub-rectangular of circular/ovate burial chamber. The passage grave tradition is one of the main burial monument styles of the European Neolithic.
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