This slate plaque from Portugal dates to the Late Neolithic/Early Copper Age, ca. 5200-4500 BP.  The plaque is from the  Tholos do Escoural, a megalithic tomb located near Escoural Cave in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal.

The artefact is curated by the Museum of São Domingos, inventory no. 1.T.E.1.79.66.

An ensemble of twelve 3D models of similar plaques can be viewed here.

Model license: “Slate Plaque” by Global Digital Heritage and GDH-Afrika is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution.

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The Tholos do Escoural—the place where the engraved plaque in this model is from—is a megalithic monument in Alentejo, Portugal.  You can view a 3D model of the excavated tholos here.  The monument is a chambered tomb built in the Copper Age (Chalcolithic), and dates to 4900-4000 BP.  The tholos was associated with the fortified settlement of Escoural.  It consists of a circular chamber about 6 metres in diameter lined with 30 vertical rock slabs.  The entrance to the chamber, referred to as a ‘dromos’, is about 3.5 metres long, with vertical stone slabs along the side and horizontal slabs across the top.  The Tholos do Escoural is known as a ‘false dome’ structure, as the domed roof was built of timber and covered with earth (as opposed to built with stone).  The Tholos do Escoural was excavated in 1966 by the archaeologists Farinha dos Santos and Octavio da Veiga Ferreira as part of the archaeological work in Escoural Cave, located nearby.

The tholos was used as a burial chamber for many generations.  Human bone was very poorly preserved in the Tholos Do Escoural, although artefacts interred with the bodies proved abundant, including dozens of ceramic vessels, about four hundred arrowheads made from flint and siliceous shale, 167 engraved slate plaques, a slate staff, a ceramic horned figurine, and thousands of adornments made from chert, serpentine, amphibolite, and jet.

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For about 700 years during the late Neolithic and early Copper Age (or Chalcolithic), ca. 5200-4500 BP, slate plaques with engraved geometric designs were an important part of the material culture of southern Portugal and southwestern Spain.  They have elicited comment and controversy since their discovery in the nineteenth century.  So far about 1800 plaques have been recovered at over 300 sites.  They are about the size of an outstretched hand and measure about 10 mm thick.  One or two holes are drilled through the top, and they are often only engraved on one side.  The engraving consists of closely spaced shallow incisions cut in with a stone flake or copper tool.

The people who made the plaques were farmers who lived in fortified settlements and ditched enclosures, suggesting widespread conflict.  They operated in a broad interaction sphere with other cultural groups, importing goods from North Africa, Western Europe, and the central Mediterranean.  Rather than based on a staple agricultural resource, the culture’s economy and social stratification was based on accumulated wealth.  The social elite were buried in megalithic tombs, called a ‘tholos’, constructed of large stone boulders with a timber and earth superstructure.  The dead were also interred in limestone caves.  The tholos tomb of Montelirio in southwestern Spain included 25 females buried with exquisite quartz crystal arrowheads and the famous ‘Ivory Lady’ crystal dagger, although no slate plaques were present there.  The associated grave goods at Montelirio and elsewhere suggest that women attained the highest positions of leadership in this matriarchal society.

Slate plaques were frequently interred as burial items in tholos tombs, suggesting that they were emblems of high-ranking individuals.  The acidic soils of the southwestern Iberian Peninsula are not often conducive to the preservation of skeletal remains, but the sex and age of four burials with plaques have been determined.  Of these, two were found with females in their 40s, one with a ‘young’ female, and one with a teenage male.  The plaques were placed on the chest or by the side of the body.  Pieces of recycled and reworked plaques are sometimes recovered from domestic contexts such as pits and middens.  The plaques disappear from the archaeological record with the start of the Bell Beaker period by about 4500 BP.

The archaeologist Katina Lillios has catalogued and analysed these engraved slate plaques and created a comprehensive online registry.  She has identified 8 basic plaque variants based on their outline shape and type of engraving.  They are usually rectangular in shape, although some have a stem cut into the top (drilled) end.  Archaeologists have speculated that the plaques are highly stylised representations of  the human form, or an owl.  The ‘head’ is at the top—and the two holes or engraved circles that appear on some are thought to represent ‘eyes’.  A ‘nose’ or ‘beak’ might be represented by a vertical band or a downward-pointed V-shaped engraving below the eyes.  The ‘shoulders’ are physically cut into the slate on the stemmed examples, and vertical lines in this area are likened to ‘straps’.  The ‘body’ is separated from the head by a horizontal line or band with infilled hatching or small triangles.

Below this band occurs horizontal blocks of decorations referred to as ‘registers’, separated by additional bands.  The registers are filled with various types of engraved motifs, including triangles, checkerboards, vertical lines, chevrons, zigzags, or a herringbone pattern.  These geometric designs are similar to the weave in various types of cloth, leading some to speculate that the decorations represent clothing.

Archaeologists have suggested that the plaques are symbols of deities such as a ‘mother goddess’, images of ancestors, representations of owls (perhaps engraved by children), or heraldic emblems.  Lillios has argued that the symbolism is meant to represent generations since an apical ancestor, with each horizontal register representing one generation removed from the time the plaque was made.  Other researchers have applied phylogenetic statistical methods to the variations in design and came up with a more general explanation: they suggest that the design similarities represent a fundamental shared ideology or core idea, with variations representing the sort of stylistic drift one might expect between different communities of practice across the southeastern Iberian Peninsula.