Ivory in the Chalcolithic enclosure of Perdigões (South Portugal): the social role of an exotic raw material

Abstract

This article discusses the social role played by ivory and ivory articles in the Perdigões enclosures (South Portugal) during the Chalcolithic (third millennium bc), in the context of the emergence and development of social complexity on the Iberian Peninsula. Perdigões is a Portuguese prehistoric site with some of the highest concentrations of ivory objects known in Iberia and with the greatest variety. The contexts, almost exclusively funerary, are discussed along with the results of provenance studies. Comparing the different contexts and the categories of objects made of ivory makes it possible to distinguishing a variety of active social dimensions (such as individual status, group identity, ideological referents, social or political roles, ontological and cosmological perceptions) to these items which drew on the importance of exotic raw materials in the reformulation of social relations that was taking place specifically at this site and in Iberia in general.

Keywords:

• Ivory
• Perdigões enclosure
• Chalcolithic Iberia
• social complexity

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Alex Gibson for the revision of this text, and two anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The site has been investigated since 1997, in a long-term programme of research led by the Archaeological Research Group (NIA) of ERA Arqueologia S.A., which has an extended list of publications (for general approaches, Valera et al. 2000, 2007; Valera 2010; Márquez et al. 2011; Valera, Silva, and Márquez Romero 2014; Valera et al. 2014).

2 All analyses were undertaken by Dr Arun Banerjee and his team at the Institute of Geosciences, University of Mainz, Germany.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

António Carlos Valera

António Valera is director of NIA (Archaeological Research Group) of Era Arqueologia company and a member of the ICAhERB research centre of Algarve University, where he coordinates the research on complex societies. He is responsible for the Global Research Programme of Perdigões enclosure and has developed research in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Iberia, particularly regarding settlement networks, funerary practices, landscape and architectures, focused specifically in enclosures.

Thomas Xaver Schuhmacher

Thomas X. Schuhmacher is a lecturer in prehistory at the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) and a Private Lecturer at the Otto-Friedrich University in Bamberg (Germany). Much of his latest work is concerned with the working, exchange and consumption of ivory in prehistory. He just finished two interdisciplinary projects concerning ivory in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Iberian Peninsula and North-Western Africa.

Arun Banerjee

Arun Banerjee is a mineralogist and former member of the Institute for Geosciences at the Mainz University, where he founded the International Centre for Ivory Studies (INCENTIVS). Since 1989 he has been working on ivory and its identification and became a consultant for the German customs and CITES expert of the Federal Nature Conservation Agency. He has published several articles and congress papers about ivory and its scientific analysis.