LETTER
Building Materials of Neolithic Tombs in Alava, Northern Spain
Luis M. Martínez-Torres
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 11
First Page: 152
Last Page: 163
Publisher ID: TOBCTJ-11-152
DOI: 10.2174/1874836801711010152
Article History:
Received Date: 07/12/2016Revision Received Date: 17/02/2017
Acceptance Date: 17/02/2017
Electronic publication date: 31/03/2017
Collection year: 2017
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Fifty-two Neolithic tombs (dolmens) were grouped into megalithic stations that are mostly located on lithotecto from which the building rocks were removed. In six dolmens, there were no clues found to explain the presence of allochthonous stones, except perhaps in one of them, where rocks were selected to cause colour contrast. The morphology of the slabs, of chambers and corridors, showed no evidence of carving. The angularity of the tumulus blocks indicates that some were collected from the surface and others were manually fragmented. The identification of the construction materials in Neolithic dolmens with elemental geological features provides information on the building process, adding valorisation to the prehistoric monuments and enabling their reconstruction.