Transporting huge blocks of stone as men used to do 5000 years ago and learning to make pottery as in prehistoric times are the two most innovative proposals in the March 24 program to mark the reopening of the Interpretation Center to the public. Alcalar, in Portimão.
The Center reopens with a program of activities linked to the discovery of the megalithic monuments, challenging a time travel back to 5000 years ago, when the megalithic tomb complex was built.
There are many proposals for this day, with free entrances, as well as commented visits and experiences of the time, such as the sounds of nature or the possibility of watching ancestral hunting techniques.
Highlight for the unprecedented ceramics workshop, which will start on that day, enabling the manual modeling of pieces through traditional techniques of ceramic production. The workshop will be coordinated by Sara navarro, a young artist who is doing a PhD project on the relationship between art and prehistoric archeology, entitled «Archaeology as a Pretext for Sculpture».
In a second session, scheduled for April 21, to commemorate the Day of Monuments and Sites, ceramics will be fired in a "soenga", a simple combustion structure, where the pieces come into direct contact with the fire, as there are five a thousand years. This month of interval between the making of the piece and its firing is necessary, so that the clay dries sufficiently.
This ceramics workshop, which will run from 10:00 am to 13:00 pm and from 14:30 pm to 17:00 pm, is aimed at different audiences interested in the technical aspects of traditional/ancestral ceramics, from the areas of education, archaeology, arts and heritage, but also open to the school community and the population in general, with mandatory registration for the two sessions foreseen.
Registration costs 7 euros and must be made at the Museum of Portimão by March 20, with a limit of 16 participants, who will be admitted in order of registration.
The Alcalar Interpretation Center, which since March 1, it works as an extension of the Portimão Museum, has shared management between the Regional Directorate of Culture of the Algarve and the Municipality of Portimão.
José Gameiro, director of the Museum of Portimão, stressed that this shared management of the megalithic monuments of Alcalar is «a challenge, which allows us to give more scale to the proposal for free time programming offered by the Museum, through our team at the Oficina Educativa». Basically, since the Days of Prehistory, an initiative that in 2010 brought thousands of visitors to Alcalar, that Museu and DRCultAlg had been trying out a joint coordination.
After the passage from the Interpretation Center to the award-winning Museum of Portimão, the structure has been closed for a few days, in order to carry out minor repairs and also to build small wooden structures to support the educational activities that are now there. will be promoted regularly.
José Gameiro, in an interview with Sul Informação, explained that this new responsibility does not increase the Museum's expenses: «it is the people who already work at the Museum who will ensure the opening and activities of Alcalar, while the small works we did and the wooden structures we created were made with the generous support of companies interested in these heritage things». to what the Sul Informação found out, these are the companies STAP and Sienave.
The director of the Portimão Museum also explained that this shared management of the Alcalar Interpretation Centre, an operating model that is being carried out for the first time in the Algarve, foresees that the Museum will ensure the cultural, educational and public reception aspects, while the Regional Directorate of Cultural will retain its responsibility for the protection and maintenance of the monument.
The objective is to actually implement "the idea of a territory museum", which starts from the Museum in Portimão and interconnects with the monuments and heritage existing in that same territory, in order to bring people - residents, visitors and tourists - to a route of discovery that encompasses the entire county. "If it weren't for the period of contention we are currently experiencing, there would be much more to be done at that level," commented Gameiro.
«The Museum has a more cultural, pedagogical and educational management capacity, not least because it is here, it resides here. In addition, our technical team has all the necessary skills, from the restoration to the educational workshop», he added.
With this shared management, there is, to start with, an obvious advantage: the Alcalar Interpretation Center now has a regular opening hours and can be visited from Tuesday to Saturday, from 10:00 am to 13:00 pm and from 14:00 pm to 16:30 pm (current time until June 31), with tickets at 2 euros.
If the public also wishes to visit the Portimão Museum, where some of the original materials and pieces discovered in the megalithic monuments of Alcalar are on display, they can purchase a joint ticket for just 4 euros.
Valuable prehistoric heritage
Alcalar's megalithic monuments have been discovered and explored since the end of the XNUMXth century and are classified as national monuments, two of which are open to the public, allowing visitors to have direct contact with the processes and materials involved in their construction.
The traces of the way of life of its builders and the respective occupation of the territory, characterized by the proximity between the village and the necropolis (set of tombs), as well as their relationship with death, are visible in the various forms of construction of different types sepulchers (hypogeum, tapir and tholoi), which allow a perspective on their daily life, as well as on the funerary practices of that community.
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