The Algarve Archaeological Association (AAA) will be presenting two lectures, in English, on Tuesday, May 3 by archaeologists Samuel Melro and Prof. Pedro Barros, titled ‘New insights into the Iron Age necropolises in southern Alentejo and the Algarve’.
The first lecture will be in the Museu do Trajo in São Brás at 2.30pm, and the second will be in the Lagoa library at 5.45pm.
The contribution of the archaeologist Caetano Mello Beirão during the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s represented a crucial moment in the archaeological investigation of the Iron Age communities in the Alentejo and the Algarve. However, some of the models then conceived have been altered in recent years. This occurred as a result of new discoveries, new interpretations and new lines of investigation of the archaeological remains, including an interdisciplinary approach between archaeology and other sciences.
In the lecture, Samuel and Pedro will talk about this new course of research and the new findings, as well as the contribution of the ESTELA project.
The ESTELA Project, established in 2008, aims to catalogue the archaeological data associated with the South-Western (or sometimes also called Tartessian) Script. This is considered by linguistic researchers to be the oldest (and still not deciphered) written form of the Iberian Peninsula (and one of the oldest of Europe), little being known about the society and culture behind it.
Geographically set in an area in the South of Portugal, the main concentration of stelae (engraved stone tablets) seems to be located away from the direct influences of the Eastern Mediterranean cultural centres of the first millennium BC.
The ESTELA project is aiming to reach a better understanding of the relationship between the South-Western Script stelae, the world of the living (settlements) and the “cities of the dead” (necropolises). This project was supported by the AAA in 2012.
Lunch in São Brás can be arranged in advance.
917 267 948 (Maxine) | [email protected] | arquealgarve.weebly.com
