Ses Païses

Monuments | Artà

If anything characterises Mallorca and Menorca’s prehistory, it is what is called the Talayotic culture. It is believed to have emerged towards the end of the second millennium BC, and it lasted until Rome’s conquest of the islands in 123 BC. Yet even after the Roman incursion, Balearic society continued to live in its Talayotic settlements for decades. In the midst of a bucolic holm oak grove in Artà, in northeast Mallorca, lies the Ses Païsses settlement. It attracts not just tourists but also scholars of Mallorca’s prehistory given its perfectly typical structure. A series of constructions surrounds a central talayot measuring 4.5 metres tall, and all of this is enclosed by an oval-shaped wall measuring 374 metres in perimeter. This wall, one of the best conserved from this Period on Mallorca, is believed to date from 800 BC. It is made of impressive large stone slabs with a lintelled door. On the grounds we can distinguish two different clusters of buildings. The first one, dominated by the talayot, consists of a series of rooms and a hall with the remains of three columns. The second one has two rooms in an apsidal layout. Recent studies point to a crisis in around 500 BC which changed the life in the Talayotic settlements on Mallorca and transformed its society. Some remains found at Ses Païsses, such as ceramics and iron items from other Mediterranean civilisations, were most certainly introduced by the slingshot wielders (foners), who, due to their prowess with the slingshot, were recruited as warriors by the Carthaginians.