The Tholos de El Romeral is the third burial mound making up the UNESCO world heritage site at Antequera. After the Dolmen De Viera and Dolmen De Menga, this burial mound seems a bit like the ‘poor relation’ as it is located in a rather run down area – 1 mile to the east of the other two mounds and the new visitors centre. You have to drive down a dusty and bumpy track past some industrial buildings to find the Tholos de El Romeral, however this is another wonderful monument and well worth visiting.
Tholos De El Romeral is more like the Dolmen De Viera as it is a passage grave type mound, but it is believed to have been built 1000 years later. The mound is larger at 85m in diameter, and has a stone lined passage running for 26m into the interior of the mound. Rather than using huge blocks of stone to construct the passage and chamber walls, these are instead built using smaller stones and a dry-stone walling technique.
The passage is roofed over with larger stone slabs, and at its end there is a doorway where you must stoop below the lintel to enter the first chamber. This large circular chamber is 5m across and nearly 4m high, having a domed or corbelled roof built with the same drystone walling. The Tholos part of the name is a Greek word, and refers to a circular structure with a domed roof.
Opposite the main passage doorway there is an opening leading into a smaller circular burial chamber which also has a corbelled roof and a large flat ‘Altar’ stone on which perhaps the bones of the dead were placed.
The Tholos de El Romeral passage is aligned to the south so there is no sunrise alignment like the Dolmen De Viera. However the passage is aligned to the highest point of the El Torcal hills, which archaeologists have shown was a significant location in Neolithic times – being the source of the La Villa river, and the site of the El Toro ancestral cave (see more details in the Dolmen de Menga post). The rays of the sun do still seem to have been of importance to the mound builders, as at the midwinter solstice the sun is low enough in the sky to shine down the passage and into the chamber during the afternoon.
Although built at a later date, and located some distance from the other two burial mounds, the alignment to the El Torcal hills shows that the El Romeral mound was still following the earlier tradition of marking significant landscape features and the sun. This is also shown by the fact that the burial mound was built on the line running between the older Dolmen De Menga mound and the Sleeping Giant hill, behind which the sun would rise at midsummer.
Final note
I did not really know what to expect when visiting Antequera, but it turned out to be a very memorable day. The three ancient burial mounds are impressive and fascinating to see inside, while the visitors centre provides background information about them and their place in Neolithic Spain. To stand inside the Dolmen de Menga looking out towards the Sleeping Giant hill is quite a special thing, and for that moment you share the same view with the mound builders, and know that it was important to them. Few ancient sites show this so clearly, and at Antequera the archaeologists have been able to provide a glimpse of how our Neolithic ancestors saw the world.
