Early Neolithic Settlement and Graves in Lisbon’s Historic Centre

Résumé

In recent years, information regarding the human presence during the Early Neolithic period in the Historic Center of Lisbon has increased, as a result of numerous preventive archaeological excavations carried out within the scope of mitigating impacts resulting from the recovery of old buildings or the construction of new ones. Such work, carried out by several Archeology companies that have worked in areas considered to be of greatest archaeological sensitivity within the city of Lisbon, have led to results of exceptional relevance for the knowledge of the first producing societies that occupied this territory from the last quarter of the 6th millennium BC. Thus, not only large settlements were identified, such as Encosta de Sant’Ana and Bairro Alto, integrating several loci, such as Palácio Ludovice. The first structured graves known in Portuguese territory at this time were also identified,
in close association with the inhabited spaces, corresponding to individual depositions in the fetal position carried out at the bottom of small graves excavated in the geological substrate. The importance of these discoveries justified the presentation of this synthesis, which summarizes all the information published to date.