Anta Grande Do Comenda Igreja

Our project for the morning, after watching the cork harvest, was to find another anta, the Anta Grande Do Comenda Igreja. With a little help from the Megalithic.co.uk this was not too difficult: locate the GPS point, park by the gate, open and close it (did you lock the car?), walk a kilometer or so across someone's field/woods, spotting numerous megalithic piles, keeping a eye out for bulls, until you see a slight rise among the trees, with megaliths atop it. In the case of this Anta, there was little doubt, since it is relatively unique: a megalithic double-decker.

Megalithic pile a few hundred yards off the "trail"; could be
the real thing; could be just a pile the aeons of generations of
farmers collected there; in this part of Alentaje, they're all
over the place; megalith builders from the Isles would have
been envious of the ease of getting at these rocks and the short
distances to move them

The Anta..Igreja is actually signed

In the Isles, we have seen stone rings surmounted by a dolmen,
but never anything like this: an alle couverte of some size
surmounted by a huge dolmen; all very structured

Entrance to the alle couverte; "covered alley"; passage grave

The surmounting dolmen; huge stones

Lightning struck the capstone and broke it in half; and there
it sits

Another view of the dolmen

View of the mound on which the whole thing sits

Looking into the passage grave; huge capstones; would have
been impressive all by itself

From the entrance to the passage grave to the dolmen

Looking down to the floor of the dolmen

Huge stones

Terrain; pastoral, cork trees

Another view of the two-fer

Parthian shot; one of the most interesting we have seen yet;
oh, same age as all the rest around here (and up north and east),
4, 5, or 6 millennia ago