Antelas dolmen

The Anta Pintada de Antelas (Antelas Painted Dolmen), also known as the Dolmen de Antelas or the Dolmen Pintada, is located about 250m. east of the village of Antelas, in the parish of Pinheiro de Lafões, in the municipality of Oliveira de Frades in Portugal's Viseu District. Classified as a National Monument since 1990, this dolmen, or megalithic tomb, is notable for its well-preserved set of paintings and engravings, arguably the best from the Neolithic period in the Iberian Peninsula.

The Anta Pintada de Antelas was first mentioned by the Portuguese geographer, Amorim Girão of the University of Coimbra in his 1921 work, Prehistoric Antiquities of Lafões, in which he noted that the monument stood out "for appearing to us to be absolutely intact". His research was part of a concerted effort at the time to prepare an inventory of the so-called "artistic and archaeological riches" of the country. A list of "national monuments" had been published in 1910, which was the first occasion on which archaeological remains were given the same legal status as other human constructions. Further research was not done until the 1950s, when significant archaeological excavations were carried out by Luís de Albuquerque e Castro, a mining engineer who worked for the General Directorate of Mines and Geological Services, Octávio da Veiga Ferreira , also a mining engineer, and Abel Viana , an archaeologist and ethnographer. At the time they reported that some of the drawings identified by Girão had disappeared and after their research the site was reburied to preserve the paintings. Their research results were published in 1957 in the "Communications of the Geological Services of Portugal", highlighting the number of painted pillars, which they had carefully recorded and interpreted for their symbolism. Albuquerque e Castro went on to present several papers, including one at the "International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences", held in Rome in 1962, that drew in part on his research at the painted dolmen.

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).