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.
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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 |
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The Anta..Igreja is actually signed |
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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 |
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Entrance to the alle couverte; "covered alley"; passage grave |
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The surmounting dolmen; huge stones |
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Lightning struck the capstone and broke it in half; and there it sits |
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Another view of the dolmen |
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View of the mound on which the whole thing sits |
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Looking into the passage grave; huge capstones; would have been impressive all by itself |
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From the entrance to the passage grave to the dolmen |
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Looking down to the floor of the dolmen |
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Huge stones |
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Terrain; pastoral, cork trees |
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Another view of the two-fer |
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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 |
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