| Summary: | Reuse of the big dolmens, with long and well developed corridors, during the First Bronze Age (Early / Middle Bronze Age – EBA/MBA) has been, for some time, a well known situation in different areas of Portugal, namely in the Mondego’s Platform. Regionally, this type of monuments were usually built in the Late Neolithic and their first use seems to terminate with that period’s end, exceptionally reaching the regional Chalcolithic; in a few known cases the corridor’s entrance was then ritually closed. If the fact of the reuse of big dolmens in the EBA/MBA is well known and generally accepted, the reasons behind this fact remain otherwise very much open to discussion. Is the phenomenon a simple reuse of a funerary space whose functional memory has been preserved or are there, behind it, other reasons associated with the transformations and socio-cultural changes of the transition tothe Bronze Age? These and other questions that are raised by such re-uses are then discussed taking into account recent progresses in our knowledge of the transitional processes between the Chalcolithic and the EBA in Iberia.
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