From Cartailhac to Guilaine. The definition of an “early” phase in the Neolithic of Portugal

Abstract

Between Cartailhac’s synthesis on the prehistoric ages of Spain and Portugal (1886) and Guilaine’s thesis on the shepherds and farmers of the Western Mediterranean (1976), the Neolithic studies in Portugal went through major changes during which the existence of an “early” phase within the period was seldom realized. Limitations of stratigraphic resolution and formal conceptualization – and research blas more often centered on the study of shell-middens and megaliths – have long prevented its definition as an autonomous unit of analysis. Between these temporal and conceptual extremes, however, there have been several studies and attempts of synthesis that deserve to be reviewed. The present contribution brings together some of the works and authors that most significantly dealt with the beginnings of the Neolithic in Portugal until the 1970’s – successively, É. Cartailhac, J. Leite de Vasconcellos, M. Vieira da Natividade, A. Santos Rocha, A. Mendes Corrêa, P. Bosch Gimpera, M. Heleno, H. N. Savory, V. Leisner and J. Guilaine. A periodization of the research itself is also tentatively put forward to give some intelligibility to a history of Archaeology which perhaps has been more characterized by omission.