SOTO DOLMEN

Lost in the fields, the Dolmen de Soto was discovered by chance in 1923. It is one of more than 200 megalithic monuments found in Huelva province, erected between the Neolithic and the bronze age. If the region has many megaliths of this type, it distinguishes itself by its size. The gallery is part of a circle of stones, unfortunately disappeared, which originally reached 75 metres in diameter, which is the longest dolmen in Spain. As in Campo Lameiro, the dolmen is buried under an artificial hill. The building had several functions: it was buried in a mother and a child, whose skeletons were found, but certainly also in terms of timing and observatory. The stone blocks supporting the roof of the gallery are all engraved with signs and symbols.

In the interpretation centre, a documentary in synthetic images details the construction of the dolmen by the population of a neighbouring village whose traces were found at 400 m from the site. A second film focuses more closely on the symbols found in the gallery.

With the dolmen approach, please note the ambulatory, which is still visible on the ground and which did the entire round of hill. Some stones remained, but most disappeared, parts for the construction of houses around or used as galleries to attend the bullfighting, as shown in the ground of the arena, which encroaches on the mound. We enter the latter with a 21 m long gallery and at the end of which the ceiling height reaches 3,5 m. The biggest stone supporting the whole weighs over 20 tons! Excavations carried out during his discovery found 8 skeletons, including that of a child. Most of them had a very large number of engravings: daggers, anthropomorphic silhouettes or symbols adorn stones in different places, without a precise reading or interpretation of the stones.

The restoration of the site has been very well conducted. The interpretation centre, drowned in the landscape, is almost invisible and the lighting of the gallery has been thought of so as to highlight the engravings.

In 2015, the municipality sought to acquire part of the adjacent field where there is a second dolmen, a little smaller dolmen that has not yet been subjected to full excavations and studies. Early research in the 1920 s found the skeletons of 18 to 20 individuals, some crouching and supported against walls and others lying on their backs. So the site is still far from having delivered all its secrets.