Today, The Grandma has spent a special day with her friend Montse in Begues,a beautiful town near in El Baix Llobregat, Barcelona.
Montse and The Grandma have visited some stone structures like La CabanadePedra de Begues and El Pou de Glaç,and they have tasted the local beer, a homage to the Neolithic past of the town.
Dry stone, sometimes called drystack ordrystane, is a building methodby whichstructures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind them together.
Dry stone structures are stable because of their construction method,which is characterized by the presence of a load-bearing façade of carefully selected interlocking stones.
Dry stone construction is best known in the context of stone walls,traditionally used for the boundaries of fields and churchyards, or as retaining walls for terracing, but dry stone sculptures, buildings, bridges, and other structures also exist. The term tends not to be used for the many historic styles which used precisely-shaped stone, but did not use mortar, for example the Greek temple and Inca architecture.
The art of dry stone walling was inscribed in 2018 on the UNESCOrepresentative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, for dry stone walls in countries such as France, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Switzerland and Catalonia.
Some dry stone wall constructions in north-west Europe have been dated back to the Neolithic Age. In County Mayo, Ireland, an entire field system made from dry stone walls, since covered in peat, have been carbon-dated to 3800 BC.
In Belize, the Mayan ruins at Lubaantun illustrate use of dry stone construction in architecture of the 8th and 9th centuries AD.
Great Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe, Africa, is an acropolis-like large city complex of immense importance, constructed in dry stone from the 11th to the 15th centuries AD. It is the largest of structures of similar construction throughout the area.
The cyclopean walls of the acropolis of Mycenae, Greece, have been dated to 1350 BC and those of Tiryns slightly earlier.
The style and method of construction of a wall will vary, depending on the type of stone available, its intended use and local tradition.
Most older walls are constructed from stones and boulders cleared from the fields during preparation for agriculture (field stones) but many also from stone quarried nearby.
For modern walls, quarried stone is almost always used. The type of wall built will depend on the nature of the stones available.
Today, The Grandma has returned to Begues to spend a wonderful day with her friend Montse. They have visited some of the most beautiful places in a village that has thousands of years of history to tell and hundreds of places, buildings and archaeological remains to display.
If you want to enjoy history, nature and some extraordinarily fantastic people, visit Begues,and you will discover how time stops and catches you and nature liberates you at the same time. It is always an unforgettable experience and a great pleasure to go to Begues.
First, Montse and The Grandma have visited the primitive church of SantCristòfol whose first reference to is a notarial document from the year 981, of which no remains are known. The characteristics of the facing of some walls made of large ashlars of red sandstone, found in archaeological excavations carried out in the sacristy, seem to correspond to the second Romanesque or transitional one (12th-13th centuries). They must not correspond, then, to the primitive temple of the ninth or tenth centuries, but to a later one, Romanesque, which has not been preserved either.
The fact that the church did not appear as a parish until the middle of the 13th century may indicate that it was formerly a church built by the community of smallholders in the area, but without the character of a parish, as the tax linked to the functions paid by all the inhabitants in the parish of Sant Miqueld'Eramprunyà and, in any case, to the lords of the castle as lords of the church.
The first mention of the existence of this parish with a rural notary is from 1264. A document from 1279 refers to the rector of Sant Cristòfol de Begues and in 1413 we have a first explicit mention of the rectory, because in the pastoral visit the repair of the rectory is demanded. It must be assumed, then, that the Romanesque temple became insufficient to cater for the growing number of attendees in the parish due, above all, to sixteenth-century French immigration.
Thus, between 1575 and 1579 this new church was built on what had been the parish cemetery. It is a nave church, with a polygonal apse and covered with very homogeneous Renaissance Gothic vaults. The most outstanding element is the Renaissance portal, with a triangular pediment supported by 2 columns, above which is the image of Saint Christopher and on the sides those of Saint George and Saint Michael the Archangel. The sundial on the cover dates from 1878, and corresponds to a 19th century renovation, at which time the red and yellow glazed flake roof that covers the bell tower must also be placed.
Later, Montse and The Grandma have visited La Rectoria. It is adjacent to the apse of the church and with the south façade facing south. It is a building with the appearance of a farmhouse, presided over by a porch that occupies the entire main façade. Until 1930, the old rectory was still the rector's house, and probably only on the ground floor did farmers live. It ceased to be used as such when the new church and rectory in the centre of the village was built in 1931, and later the old one was sold to Mr. Queralt, a person who actively participated in the arrangement of the road from Gavà to Begues in the 1940s.
La Rectoria is a building attached to the old church of Sant Cristòfol. It has its origins in the thirteenth century, having small several later reforms. The characteristic porticoes galleries on the façade must date from the 18th century.
For centuries the church and rectory were isolated in depopulation, until in 1828 the rector was allowed to parcel out the bad lands of the environment for economic and security reasons, thus beginning the suburb of La Rectoria.
The suburb of La Rectoria was set up from 1830 on the lands of the diocese in order to give protection and economic resources (censuses) to the rector who, until then, lived in the open, in a very vulnerable situation to the insecurity of the age. The houses on Carrer de Sant Cristòfol, Cal Traginer and Cal Fusteret were built during the 19th century, while Cal Gaietano could well be from the 18th century.
To the south of the church and next to the road to Gavà is Cal Paulo, a building with a square floor plan, three floors and a roof on four sides, following the classicist models starting to build in 1840 and completed in 1896. It was owned by the canon, and it seems that initially it was supposed to be a convent, but in fact throughout the twentieth century it was a farmhouse with its neighbourhood and various terraced sheds.
Finally, Montse and The Grandma have visited El Mur, a wonderful place located in a privileged environment. This viewpoint is an ideal place to enjoy the silence and contemplate a totally panoramic landscape of the south of the Baix Llobregat. It is a space dedicated to reflection, tranquillity and meditation. For this reason, it has been christened the Space of Silence.
The viewpoint includes a park with trails designed to stimulate the senses of sight, smell and hearing, with four sensory walks along the paths of the viewpoint. Colours, smells, contemplation and meditation are the four axes that guide these routes.
It has public benches, services and a material store to store the equipment needed to organize activities around meditation and contemplation.
One of the main attractions of the viewpoint is the paths that run just below the vaults of the entrance. You can walk along the paths until you reach the so-called viewpoint of the cave, from where you can see an extensive panorama of the Llobregat Delta.
Today, The Grandma has returned to Begues, a place she loves a lot.
She has had a meeting with her friend Montse, and after eating some delicious loquats and taking some drinks, they have gone to visit el Pou de Glaç, a large circular plan structure excavated in the calcareous subsoil to fill it with snow or ice after the snowfall, in order to dispose of them during the rest of the year. Water is life, and obtaining and keeping it has been a human work since Prehistoric ages.
Begues is a wonderful place where you can discover the past, enjoy the present and plan your future if you like nature, peace and quietness. The town is a place full of kind people who are proud of their history and fight to conserve their heritage.
El Pou de Glaçis a large circular plan structure that does not retain the roof, which was possibly in the shape of a dome.
It measures 13 m in outside diameter (10.95 m inside) and has a preserved depth of 10 m. It is largely excavated in the calcareous subsoil, while the powerful walls are made of ashlars of limestone and sandstone, bound with lime mortar.
At the top there are two hatches, one facing west and one to the east, which would access the interior. At the top of the south face, there is a third opening, small and in the shape of a peat, which may have been used to introduce straw and the bowl with which they covered the ice. In the lower part of the well, on the north façade, there was a sewer that drained the water towards the Riera de Begues. This, however, is not currently visible, as it is possibly covered in rubble.
The location of this well is not free: it is located next to the stream, just at the end of the Pla de Begues, where the stream has already collected much of the water from the tributary torrents. At this point, in addition, there would be natural pelagic that accumulated water, favoured by the clayey and impermeable substrate of the sector. It is shady, a few meters above the stream and very close to the Via Mercadera, the road that connected Barcelona with Vilafranca and Tarragona, passing through Begues. In addition, this is the sector where the plan has lower altitude, and where therefore the thermal investment created by encircling the mountains produces the strongest frosts (-10 to -12º are not exceptional) and frequent (currently 40 to 60 days of frost per year).
The refrigerator, freezer, snow house, ice well, snow well, well or cava is that construction made by drilling the ground in the mountains where it snows during the winter.
These holes, often rectangular but with an elliptical tendency, are made with the purpose of filling them with snow or ice after the snowfall, in order to dispose of them during the rest of the year. Usually a refrigerator was a circular well.
The upper part was closed with a vaulted roof that had openings to allow the introduction and extraction of snow or ice, although they sometimes had a lower entrance for the extraction operation.
It
should be noted that the plant is between 10 and 16 meters long and
between 5 and 8 meters wide. The depth is usually between 4 and 8 m. The
construction protrudes to the surface approximately one meter and is
all dry stone to conserve the snow as long as possible and to avoid that the formation of water by fusion affects the ice,
since with the dry stone, the water could to go out.
These snow houses
were always covered and included a porch or housing for snowmen, some
walls, and driveways. Snowmen's paths are cobbled horseshoe paths.
Before there were ice factories, ice storage and distribution became an important business involving a significant part of the rural population. Examples are found throughout the eastern Mediterranean.
The activity of artificial glaciers has been known since Romantimes; their great development took place between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and they have been used until the middle of the twentieth century, when, with the advent of the first refrigerators, they fell into disuse.
Until now, food preservation was carried out thanks to brine, fertilizers, preserves or the use of snow. The latter system was the basis for a job and a profession that survived until about 1931.
In classical antiquity, doctors already prescribed the use of cold for medicinal purposes. This use recovered strongly in the Renaissance.
The most common therapeutic uses of ice have been: lowering the temperature in febrile processes, those caused by the cholera epidemic, as a sedative in cases of cerebral congestion and particularly in meningitis, to stop bleeding and as an anti-inflammatory or in trauma, sprains or fractures.
The progressive establishment of ice factories from 1890 in several cities was leaving aside the network of artificial glaciers and ice production taking advantage of the climate. Until then, it took advantage of a natural resource (renewed annually) sustainably, although depending on the climate, which gave times of ice shortage in front of others of great snowfalls that filled the snow mountains and day labourers.
Until the sixties, in the twentieth century, it was necessary to go and buy ice bars to feed the first domestic refrigerators. With the advent of refrigerators and the production of ice in industrial form, dependence on meteorology is avoided. The ice and snow warehouses, as well as the techniques of collection, storage, extraction and transport, were then obsolete.
Today, The Grandma has returned to Begues, one of the most beautiful places you can visit in your life. She has not travelled alone, but Josephde Ca'th Lon has joined her.
Joseph and The Grandma love Archaeology, and they have visited Can Sadurní cave, an amazing site where was found L'Encantat de Begues, a Neolithic figurine that is considered the oldest in the Iberian Peninsula in its category.
Joseph and The Grandma have been accompanied by Montse, a friend of them who lives in Begues and who has explained them all the secrets about these incredible Neolithic discoveries. They have been talking about a report edited by Universitat de Barcelona explaining the singularities and the importance of this figure.
Begues is a municipality in the comarca of Baix Llobregat in Catalonia.
It is situated in the south-west of the comarca, and its municipal territory covers most of the Garraf massif, including the peaks of el Montau (658 m) and La Morella (594 m).
In the course of the excavation process in Can Sadurní cave in Begues,members of the Col·lectiu per la Investigació de la Prehistòria i l’Arqueologia del Garraf-Ordal (CIPAG), together with the UB Seminar of Studies and Prehistoric Research (SERP), found in summer the torso, with one complete arm and the initial part of the other, of a human figurine made of pottery. Its chronostratigraphic unit makes it, until now, the most ancient human figurine of the Prehistory in Catalonia; it is dated 6500 years ago.
The figurine, which is also the most ancient one found in the Iberian Peninsula, is an important indicator of the relevance that Can Sadurní might have had as a meeting point for the inhabitants of the closest areas during the Neolithic Age.
This is not the first discovery that has been made in the cave, where the CIPAG researchers have been working for 34 years, and where the most ancient evidence of production and consumption of beer were previously identified. These discoveries point that Can Sadurní might have hosted some feasts, in which rare products might have been consumed. Moreover, other rituals with a mark symbolic nature might have been hosted there, any kind of crucial celebration to bring together groups scattered around the area and to ensure their economical, ideological and sexual reproduction.
The figurine matches with the beginnings of the Middle Neolithic, exactly the discovery has been made in the layer 11 (post cardial Middle Neolithic 1a), on its contact with the layer 11b (post cardial Early Neolithic 0).
The figurine, only found until now in its torso, its neck and its right arm, represents a human figure, probably a male one. The preserved fragment is 8 cm height, 1.90 cm thick and its width depends on the point from which we measure: 2.5 cm from its waist, 4 cm from its chest (if we only take into account the preserved arm), and about 5.5 cm on the same point, but we imagine both arms stretched out. The development of the rest of the body make think about a 16-18 cm height figurine.
Although it is impossible to notice them clearly to the naked eye, when the figurine is observed with grazing light two different lines can be noticed; they could be carvings that seem to reproduce some elements of clothing and ornaments. In fact, this kind of images used to be dressed up as humans, and they do not show clearly sexual attributes, so normally the only element that allows to know the sex of the figure are breasts.
In the case of Begues discovery, the absence of female breasts makes think that probably it is a male figurine. This male attribution means a novelty in the Iberian Peninsula because, up to now, more than the 80 % of similar Mediterranean and European representations are female ones.
The existence of a left arm is quite obvious because of the loosening fracture observed on the opposite side. In fact, this arm will probably be found in future excavation procedures. Both arms are holed vertically. This feature indicates that the original position that the artisan imagined was the one of a figurine hanged from a cord or a leather strap. The cord might have been used in order to hang the figurine on a person’s neck or on a site inside the cave. The figurine’s neck is nearly all preserved and, as most of that time figurines, it is possible that the head was mobile and interchangeable, in order to fit it into the neck’s hole.
Some examples of detached heads made of stone, terracotta or pottery have been found in sites of Neolithic Balkan and West Mediterranean cultures. A great number of researchers believe that these heads were interchangeable and, in many cases, made of wood, a fact which explains why they have not been found.
A careful observation allows identifying the figurine’s breast and back: on its back there is a central and vertical depression which marks its spine and shoulders. The position of the longitudinal section of the right arm indicates that the arms are stretched out, in a reception attitude. In addition, the pelvic area has an angle that is less than 180º between the waist and the beginning of the lower limbs, what makes think that the figurine was in a sitting down position or with the legs bent.
It is unknown how the legs end, but probably they do in flat feet, as it happens in a great number of figurines found from France to the Near East, going through Italy, the Balkans and Anatolia. We hope that next excavation works document other fragments of the figurine to better understand the whole artefact.
All the know factors show that the figurine has a great symbolic and spiritual value. Generally, literature about this kind of images considers them to be images with divine attributes. To sum up, all its characteristics points towards what, in prehistory, can be defined as an idol. Researchers took into account this magical religious component, and the fact that traditionally Begues inhabitants have always received the nickname Els Encantats, in order to name the figurine as L'Encantat de Begues.
Can Sadurní excavations belong to the project La prehistòria al sud-est del Llobregat. De la costa al massís del Garraf-Ordal, coordinated by the professor at the UB Department of Prehistory, Ancient History and Archaeology, Josep Maria Fullola, and the prehistorian and archaeologist Manuel Edo, the CIPAG president.
The excavations, led by the researchers Manuel Edo and Ferran Antolín, are supported by the Begues Town Council, the Culture Department of the Government of Catalonia and the Centre d'Estudis Beguetans, as well as by other organizations and local enterprises, such as the caves Montau of Sadurní, where the cave and Can Sadurní masia are located.
In archaeology, context is everything. Objects allow us to reconstruct the past. Taking artifacts from a temple or an ancient private house is like emptying out a time capsule.
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