Dolmen Maimón II
DatedEst. 4000–3000 BCE
Photo Estevoaei · CC BY-SA 4.0Source file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
Overview
Dolmen Maimón II is a megalithic tomb in the municipality of Alcántara, in the province of Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain. It is one of the best-known dolmens of the Alcántara group and stands on a farm beside the EX-117 road, about 2 km south-west of the EX-207.
It has a circular chamber and a long corridor, and five of its chamber stones bear engraved decoration. It is dated to the fourth millennium BC, with use extending into the Bronze Age.
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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 Maimón II
The dolmen consists of a circular chamber set in a circular mound, which is bordered by an incomplete ring of slate slabs forming an enclosure, and a long corridor.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen Maimón IICC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen Maimón IICC BY-SA 4.0
The dolmen consists of a circular chamber set in a circular mound, which is bordered by an incomplete ring of slate slabs forming an enclosure, and a long corridor. The chamber had 10 supporting stones and a diameter of 2.3 m. The remaining height of the slabs is approximately 1.0 m. The corridor has four preserved orthostats on the left and six on the right. The roof of the chamber is missing, but a capstone of the passage lies obliquely just in front of the chamber.
Five orthostats of the chamber are decorated with engravings: anthropomorphic and branching figures, sun figures, shells and a quadruped. The technique combines that usual in the dolmens of Alcántara with that found around the Tagus in Portugal. Pecking is complemented by incised motifs and paintings, of which only fragments survive in Alcántara, at the Trincones dolmens. Some of the stones on the edge of the mound have cup marks.
ExcavationsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen Maimón IICC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen Maimón IICC BY-SA 4.0
The dolmen was excavated and restored in 1999 under the direction of the archaeologist Primitiva Bueno Ramírez. Before its restoration it had been used by local shepherds as a chimney and as a place to deposit stones.
DatingSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen Maimón IICC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen Maimón IICC BY-SA 4.0
As is usual for the dolmens of Extremadura, it has been dated to the fourth millennium BC, and its use goes back to the Bronze Age. The catalogue record for the site gives a typological estimate of 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE.
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
From the article
Dated moments in the story
- 1999
Es uno de los dólmenes más conocidos del conjunto arqueológico de los dólmenes de Alcántara. Se ubica en una finca junto a la carretera EX-117, unos 2 km al suroeste de la EX-207. Este dolmen fue excavado y restaurado en 1999 bajo la dirección de la arqueóloga Primitiva Bueno Ramírez.
Source
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
1 photograph, each with its author and licence
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
- 39°39′37″ N, 6°52′39″ WFor a GPS or map app: 39.66035, -6.87763
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.
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Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q50689283wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
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Around this place
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Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Dolmen Maimón II" (Spanish), 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
- Wikipedia (Spanish): Dolmen Maimón IICC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikidata Q50689283CC0