Runestones From Castelinho, Portugal

(August 20, 2023) Outer Ring Translation:

1. The life-thread's fertility-fluids should be shepherded by Hu and the eagle-vultures.  Hu and the Controllers (Ayu and eagle-vultures) can be energized by spewing-out Thu.  Chaos in astrological-owls can activated by considerations (focused thoughts of emotion magic).  The life-thread's fertility-fluids cause anxiety for Yahu (Y'). The waters can be shepherded by eagle-vultures.  Ignore  those shepherds (magic crafters) revealing [   ].

Right Inner Line Translation

1. Are not waters [shep]herded by fertility-fluids? Considerations (focused thoughts of emotion magic) should be watered by astrology-magic. Considerations [   ]

Left Inner Line Translation (upside down relative to first inner line)

2. The same Controllers and "sun" (Hu)  considerations [missing verb]
3. Considerations can cull life-manifestations.  Energize Alu with astrology-owls (instead).  Astrology-magic can spew-forth [word]

The following is taken directly form an archealogy report about the site by its lead archaeologists, Carlos Fabião and Amilcar Guerra in 2008:

The archaeological importance of Mesas do Castelinho was only clearly understood in the 1950s, when Abel Viana and others published a paper on the site, presenting a black glazed Greek vase (Viana, Ferreira & Serralheiro, 1956). In that paper the site was described as an Iron Age hill fort, with signs of Roman occupation and evidence of Islamic artefacts. The paper had some impact due to the long period of occupation of the site, and also because few Portuguese sites then had Greek ceramics recorded. Henceforth the site was regularly present on southern Portugal’s archaeological cartography. Later, the German archaeologist H. Schubart suggested the place could have had also a late Bronze Age occupation, based on some ceramic fragments from surface collection (Schubart,1975). Despite this fragile argument, not confirmed by later research, Mesas do Castelinho still occurs frequently in maps of Bronze Age settlement in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. 

Although it was a well known archaeological site, Mesas do Castelinho suffered extensive destruction in 1986. This episode led to the classification of the site as cultural heritage, managed by the Portuguese national agency for cultural heritage, and from that date a conservation and research programme began. The first step was a true rescue excavation in some of the more affected areas of the site (Fabião & Guerra, 1991; Ferreira, 1992; Fabião & Guerra, 1994; Fabião, 1998). Although the project has now proceeded for more than twenty years, our knowledge of the site is not as ample as could be expected. On the one hand, this is because, as a cultural heritage site, it began as a rescue intervention and, with the major aim being to prepare the area for public display, there was less attention to the scientific research questions. On the other hand, the site has some large stratigraphic sequences, some of them going from the Islamic back to the Iron Age period, more than 5 metres deep in the soil. A long tradition of earth building techniques, dating back to the Iron Age, but also used in the other periods, explains the sedimentary process that caused such stratigraphy. The combination of these constraints helps to explain why we do not yet have more solid conclusions on many issues of the site. (Fabião and Guerra 2010 but presented at a symposium in 2008)

 Amilicar Guerra continues the stele's text story in his next paper (translated by Google):

Some time later, Rui Cortes, from the municipality of Almodovarense, received the news that another monument belonging to this writing group had been identified in S. Martinho, near the boundaries between the municipalities of Almo- dôvar and Silves, but still within the territory of the latter. This remarkable piece (stele do Mesas de Castelinho), which then constituted one of the two most extensive texts known, was some time later published in conjunction with a fragment of another stele from the site of Corte do Freixo, identified a few years earlier, but then still unpublished.

 However, in about a decade, we have had the opportunity to register the appearance of five completely new monuments, increasing substantially the local repertoire of such manifestations. These epigraphic novelties and their dissemination have had some impact on the community. local authorities, in particular those responsible for local authorities who, in a given At the time, they undertook the creation of a structure dedicated to the preservation of this important patrimonial wealth.

Thus, in September 2008, the municipality of Almodôvar opened rou a museum unit specifically dedicated to the so-called 'writing' of the Southwest', thus giving birth to MESA - Museum of Writing of the Southwest, Al- Modôvar.  (Guerra 2009)

References