CALASCOVES
(Hypogeums)
Necropolis of Calascoves

LOCATION:

Situation

In the walls of the cliffs that dominate the two twin creeks with this name and the ravine of "Biniadrís" that leads to the oriental.

You arrive to this one for a cart road that leaves from the access to the urbanization of Son Vitamina de Mar.



MUNICIPAL DISTRICT:

Alaior.


DESCRIPTION:

With its 91 located cavities, it constitutes the biggest known "necropolis of hypogeums" in the island. In it, there are samples of the three known types ("oven caves", "big hypogeums", of monolobulate or polilobulate plan and vertical entrance, and "caves or natural cavities" closed with a cyclopean wall), being maybe the most interesting the "big hypogeums", with external court open to the sky, right or concave facades, "capades de moro" ("head butts of Moorish") or small niches, doors and windows, pillars and pilasters and small wells.


CHRONOLOGY:

The oldest cavities (the "oven caves") swould go back, according to the materials found during their excavation, to the 9th and 8th centuries B.C. (Talayotic II), while the "big hypogeums" would go from the 6th century (B.C.) until the Romanization (Talayotic III and IV) - a wooden fragment probably found in the Hypogeum XXI, and belonging to a coffin, gave a radiocarbon date of 326 B.C. (calibrated) -.


© Ferran Lagarda i Mata, 1996-2012 (text and pictures). All rights reserved.