All different, all the same? The old question of funerary architectures and the new data from Southern Portugal

Abstract

Contrary to what would be expected, the advance of research with better methodologies and other analytical tools has not brought us more answers but, on the contrary, there are more and more doubts about the way the populations who lived and died in Southern Portugal between the 4th and the 3rd millennium B.C. lived. The old question about the evolution of architectures and their distribution in space and time is, more than ever, being evaluated (or re-evaluated). Were we all different a social groups and did we all have similar structures and rituals or, on the contrary, were we all the same but had very different structural and ritual choices? Whether one approaches this question on a regional, supra-regional or even Western European level the answer is not easy and may never be feasible due to a number of factors/problems that may disrupt and render insurmountable the possibility of reaching more or less valid conclusions.