Portimão invites families to spend a whole day learning about how people lived 5,000 years ago in Alcalar.
Portimão Museum’s is hosting “A Day in Prehistory” at Alcalar’s Megalithic Monuments on May 13. The popular event, aimed mainly at families, will include recreations of how people lived in the area 5,000 years ago.
During the event, which runs from 10h00 to 18h00 and is free of admission, participants can participate in several practical and didactic workshops, including hunting, pottery, engraving, weaving, tool making, carving, music, cooking, transporting large monoliths and milling.
In addition to guided visits to the megalithic monuments with the archaeologists who excavated and investigated the site, the day will be enlivened with performances by students of the Theatre Interpretation and Strings and Keyboards courses of the Bemposta School, who will recreate sounds and everyday scenes of prehistorical times.
Without matches and using flint knives, two dozen volunteers and the Portimão Museum team
will light fires and prepare the food as it was made 5,000 years ago using stone instruments.
These diverse recreations, carried out since 2006, are organised in collaboration with the Museum of Lagos, the Parish Councils of Portimão, Alvor and Mexilhoeira Grande, the Regional Directorate of Culture of the Algarve and the Group of Friends of the Museum of Portimão.
Five millennia have passed
Located a few kilometres North-West of Portimão, an important prehistoric community settled and lived in Alcalar some 5,000 years ago. Defended by walls, trenches and embankments, next to the dwellings, an important set of megalithic tombs was built.
The remains found here enabled archaeologists to interpret the community’s way of life and activities and how it occupied and used the site.
This people’s relationship with death is evident in the way the different types of tombs were constructed, from collective graves to those intended for leaders and their families.
Discovered and explored since the end of the 19th century, the megalithic monuments of Alcalar are classified as National Monuments. Two of its funerary structures (VII and IX) are currently open to the public, giving visitors direct contact with the processes and materials used in their construction.
The historical recreation of May 13 is part of a set of initiatives promoted by the Portimão Museum to mark its 15th anniversary. Other events include the inauguration of the “Manuel Guerreiro, O Homem do Jazz” exhibition, open from May 20 to September 3, and the 23rd Portimão Photographic Race, place on May 20.
Additional information on “A Day in Prehistory in Alcalar” can be requested by telephone (282 405 230 | 282 248 594) or by e-mail ([email protected]).
