Dolmen de Pedra Moura de Monte Carneo
DatedEst. 4000–3000 BCE
Photo Lameiro · CC BY-SA 4.0Source file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
Overview
The Pedra Moura de Monte Carneo is a dolmen in the municipality of Vimianzo, in the province of A Coruña, Galicia, Spain. It has the status of bien de interés cultural, declared in 2011. The catalogue gives it a typological date estimate of 4000 to 3000 BCE.
It has never been excavated. Work on the plot in 1989 damaged the structure, but also revealed a fragment of Bell Beaker pottery in the passage.
Read on Wikipedia2 min readCC BY-SA 4.0
Where it sits in time
The site's dated range, placed against world reference points.
The scale is logarithmic: each step to the left is about ten times older than the last.
Article
Dolmen de Pedra Moura de Monte Carneo
The dolmen stands close to the dolmens of Arca da Piosa, Pedra da Lebre and Pedra Cuberta.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Pedra Moura de Monte CarneoCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Pedra Moura de Monte CarneoCC BY-SA 4.0
The dolmen stands close to the dolmens of Arca da Piosa, Pedra da Lebre and Pedra Cuberta. It is a neighbour of the Pedra Cuberta but smaller. It has a polygonal chamber with six orthostats and a short passage of which four pillars remain. The entrance capstone is missing. The capstones of the burial chamber are present but displaced, and one of them has fallen inside. The dolmen bears traces of red and black paint on a white ground.
Little remains of the original tumulus, which was about 15 m in diameter.
HistorySources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Pedra Moura de Monte CarneoCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Pedra Moura de Monte CarneoCC BY-SA 4.0
There has never been an archaeological excavation at the site. In 1989 the plot of Pedra Moura was converted from scrub to pasture. The conversion work damaged the structure of the dolmen, and stones were moved. The work did, however, lead to the discovery in the passage of a fragment of bell-shaped pottery (Bell Beaker culture), now kept in the Archaeological and Historical Museum of A Coruña.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Pedra Moura de Monte CarneoCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Pedra Moura de Monte CarneoCC BY-SA 4.0
Spain has a great many megalithic tombs, and the Atlas's Spanish dolmens run from Andalusia in the south to Galicia in the north-west.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Dolmens of Andalusia, Extremadura and Galicia
Spain has a great many megalithic tombs, and the Atlas's Spanish dolmens run from Andalusia in the south to Galicia in the north-west. The finest are at Antequera in Andalusia, where the Dolmen of Menga, dated to about 3750 to 3650 BCE, is among the largest ancient megalithic structures in Europe. It is 27.5 metres long, 6 metres wide and 3.5 metres high, built with thirty-two megaliths, the largest weighing about 180 tonnes. After the chamber was finished it was covered with soil and built up into the hill seen today; when it was opened in the nineteenth century archaeologists found the skeletons of several hundred people. The Dolmen of Viera stands 70 metres away, and the tholos of El Romeral lies about 4 kilometres off; the three were inscribed as the Antequera Dolmens Site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in 2016.
In the south-west, the Dolmen de Soto at Trigueros in Huelva province is a Neolithic tomb estimated to date between 3000 and 2500 BCE, one of about 200 Neolithic burial sites in the province. It was found in 1922 when its owner, Armando de Soto Morillas, wanted to build a house; the German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier found eight bodies in a fetal position with artefacts, and its engraved and painted uprights have been studied more recently.
In Galicia and Portugal a dolmen is an anta, and in Catalan-speaking areas dolmens have folk names such as cova (cave), caixa (crate or coffin), taula (table) and arca (chest). These names are tradition: they record what people made of the monuments, not what they were built for.
When visiting Menga, look at the great capstones from inside the corridor, and at the way the mound was built up over the chamber.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Dolmen of Menga, Wikipedia: Dolmen of Viera, Wikipedia: Antequera Dolmens Site, Wikipedia: Dolmen de Soto, Wikipedia: Dolmen · CC BY-SA 4.0
See it in 3D
An interpretive reconstruction of the monument, standing on the real ground at its exact point, under the sun for that place and season. Drag to look around it.
The reconstruction is ours, not a survey: it shows what a monument of this type looks like, at the size the record gives for this one.
Photographs
4 photographs, each with its author and licence
More photographs
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 4000–3000 BCEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for dolmens in Spain; this site has not been dated itself. Most dolmens date from the Late Neolithic period (4000-3000 BCE); the Dolmen of Menga in Andalusia dates to about 3750-3650 BCE.Source for this date
Where it stands
Spain
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 43°04′53″ N, 8°58′40″ WFor a GPS or map app: 43.08133, -8.97783
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
Dolmen de Pedra Cuberta4000–3000 BCE
Dolmen de Pedra da Lebre4000–3000 BCE
Arca da Piosa dolmen4000–3000 BCE- DolmenPedra Vixía4000–3000 BCE
- DolmenAnta de Prado Garrido4000–3000 BCE
Arca do Rabós4000–3000 BCE
Arquiña de Vilaseco4000–3000 BCE
Pedra da Arca4000–3000 BCEPhoto: Lansbricae from Santiago de Compostela, España · CC BY-SA 2.0
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Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q25379584wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
Image files
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Pedra Moura de Monte Carneo" (French), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; authors are listed in the page history. Reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · Edit history and authors