Landscape and Astronomy in Megalithic Portugal: the Carregal do Sal Nucleus and

is bordered by the Central Massif to the southeast, the Marginal Massif to the west and northwest, and the Douro basin to the north (see Fig. 1). The area covers most of the drainage basins of the upper Mondego, the Vouga and part of the Douro rivers. The Cen-tral Massif, especially Star Mountain Range, offers good pastures during the spring and summer seasons and has evidence of human usage since the fifth millennium BC (Cruz 2001: 297). Shortly after this early Neolithic occupation, megalithic dolmens and tumuli began to punctuate the surrounding land-scape and are especially concentrated around the most important rivers of the region. Passage graves, dolmens and other mega-liths throughout the Atlantic façade of Europe are located and oriented according to the landscape (Tilley 1994), but also towards particular astronomical events (Ruggles 1999). In the 1980s Michael Hoskin surveyed dolmens in this region of Portugal and con-cluded them to be loosely oriented towards sunrise/climb at the moment they wer