Time Team: The 98 series

Programme 5: Deya, Mallorca

The Team's foray abroad this year was to Deya on the island of Mallorca, in pursuit of the 'Beaker folk', an enigmatic culture - dating from about 2500 to 1300 BC during the Copper Age – thought by some to have been responsible for the introduction of metalwork into Britain. Here, the traces of them are few, but on Mallorca, Professor Bill Waldren has uncovered Son Oleza, a virtually complete prehistoric settlement the size of a football pitch.

He has found foundations for buildings, both domestic and communal, and perimeter walls; clay-lined water channels to supply the houses; and a large quantity of finds including 127,000 pieces of Beaker pottery – more than have been found in the whole of Britain. The Team also investigate a 'maze' that presents them with some difficulties - not least the removal of over a ton of rubble from a promising wall line – and a temple site that may have astronomical implications.

Phil tries his hand at smelting copper.

What is the relationship between these hills and an ancient Beaker religion?

The place where the hills come in from the left and right, making a notch in the horizon, is aligned with the deliberately hollowed-out side of one of the standing stones in the Son Mas sanctuary at Deya on Mallorca. In about 2000 BC, the constellation known as the Southern Cross would have emerged right at the notch. According to astroarchaeologist Michael Hoskens, this alignment did not happen by chance; he believes that the Southern Cross was an object of worship for the ancient Beakers at Deya.

As the centuries passed, the constellation would have dropped closer and closer to the horizon until, in about 1700 BC, the bottom star would not have been visible. At this point, something serious seems to have happened at the site. From the samples he had taken, radiocarbon-dating expert Mark Van Strydonck found that activity at the sanctuary dated from 2200 to 1700 BC; then there was a gap of about 400 years when it appears that the site was abandoned. It wasn't until 1300 BC that another culture built there. It could be that the 'sighting stone' is the only remaining part of the Beaker sanctuary, which may have been abandoned or even destroyed when the Beakers' object of worship – the Southern Cross – 'fell' from the sky.

Resources

Websites

This website contains links to other websites which are not under the control of and are not maintained by Channel 4 Television. Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of these sites and does not necessarily endorse the material on them.

Images of sites in Mallorca
www.le.ac.uk/archaeology/rug/image_collection/
Leicester University site – good images, but no explanations.

L'Arqueologia de Menorca
http://classicweb.com/usr/magazine/menorca/
All in Catalan, but good images of Ancient Menorca

Books

The Balearic Islands by Luis Pericot Garcia (Ancient Peoples and Places: Thames & Hudson, 1973, hardback) £14.95, out of print
This is the only recent popular book in English specifically about the archaeology of Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera. Worth trying to find in second-hand bookshops.

The Deya Conference of Prehistory: Early settlement in the western Mediterranean islands and their peripheral areas edited by WH Waldren, RW Chapman, JG Lewthwaite and RC Kennard (BAR International Series 229, parts i-iv, 1984)

The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe edited by Barry Cunliffe (Oxford University Press, 1994) hardback £30; paperback £13.99
A beautifully illustrated history of European society from the earliest evidence of humans to the final decline of the Romans. All the contributors are experts in their fields and there is a good chapter about the early Bronze Age.