Domesticating Light and Shadows in the Neolithic: The Dombate Passage Grave (A Coruña, Spain)

Abstract

Research on the Neolithic monuments and dwellings of Atlantic Europe has shown that plays of light and colour were tools for the social and symbolic construction of the world. The integration of the architectures into the surrounding landscape and the incorporation of the surrounding landscape into the architectures were an essential part of this logic. In this context, recent research in the megalithic passage grave of Dombate has evidenced an unusual physical manifestation of sunlight, which interacts with the decorated back stone. The light-and-shadow phenomenon occurs at sunrise during the period of winter solstice. In this paper we discuss the particulars of this phenomenon and we argue that sunlight when it penetrates the passage and chamber at sunrise on these dates may have dictated how the art was located and applied to the structural stone. Such differentiation seems to have had important cultural and ritual significance and encoded/embedded meaning for the tomb builders and may have implications for the consideration of the symbolic dimension of similar architectures in Atlantic Europe.

‘The Dead are Watching Us’: A Landscape Study of Prehistoric Rock-cut Tomb Cemeteries in Ossi, Sardinia, Italy

“…-Tombs are located on rocky hill slopes with a southeast aspect; -Tombs are deliberately orientated toward specific settled areas located within a 200-600 m range (up to 1.5 km in one occasion) from the cemeteries, and at a similar altitude to the tombs in the landscape; (eg, MacKie 1997;Sauzade 2000;Hoskin 2008;Saletta 2011). It has also been argued that sunset orientations were aimed at producing particular light effects inside Neolithic burial monuments (Hensey 2008;González-García et al 2019). Links between tomb orientations and landscape features such as mountains or coasts have also been highlighted, showing how the physical environment was integrated into the design and ritual use of the monuments (eg, Scarre 2002;Cumming et al 2002;Prendergast 2016;Rogerio-Candelera et al 2018).…”

Materialidades, espacio, pensamiento: arqueología de la cognición visual

“…Esto abrió una rama de la arqueología del paisaje que en realidad contribuía a una arqueología del pensamiento y del concepto de espacio. Desde entonces, diferentes trabajos han permitido comprobar cómo la concepción del espacio-tiempo propia de cada formación cultural, dio lugar a diferentes formas de arquitectura, paisaje e, incluso, cultural material (Criado-Boado y Villoch 1998; Prieto- Martínez et al 2003;Gianotti et al 2011;Troncoso et al 2011;Santos-Estévez 2012;Criado-Boado 2014;Espinosa-Espinosa y González-García 2017;González-García et al 2019;Troncoso 2019;Troncoso et al 2019). Sin embargo, ninguno de ellos demostró por qué ocurre eso.…”

Landscapes of the ‘Coast of Death’: dolmen topographies of NW Iberia

“…Much work has also been done in the landscape studies of Galician megalithic monuments, notably LiDAR data (post-2000). There are also papers that combine cultural and social elements of the megalithic builders in Galicia for interpretive analyses (Criado-Boado & Villoch-Vázquez 1998;Criado Boado et al 2006;Gianotti et al 2011, González-García 2018González-García et al 2019). Criado-Boado & Villoch-Vázquez´s 1998 work, based on the Barbanza peninsula, specifically engages with the landscape in which the dolmens are located.…”

“…Finally, it should be noted that in their visits they noticed a location trend of the mounds, namely that in general 'the horizon is closer and higher towards West and North while it is lower and far towards East and South' (Criado- Boado and Villoch-Vázquez 1998in González-García et al 2017: 96-97, González-García 2018. Interestingly, the orientation of dolmens in Galicia, considered as the inside-out direction towards the symmetry axis of the corridor, appeared to systematically face a quite restricted area of the horizon, from the east towards slightly south of the winter solstice sunrise (Hoskin 2001;González-García & Belmonte 2010;Vilas-Estevez 2016;González-García et al 2017), a moment that might have been rather interesting at particular monuments, such as Dombate (González-García et al 2019). Within this horizon range, the sunrise after the autumn equinox and before spring equinox can also be viewed, but conversely it could be consistent with the area for moonrise (Silva and Pimenta 2012;Vilas-Estévez 2016).…”