The MugePortal application, for mobile devices (tablets and smartphones) and multiplatform (Android, iOS), is an augmented reality application that allows enable the activation of content in the form of texts, videos, animations, 2D/3D models about the Muge complex and the human communities that populated the valley during the Mesolithic period.

Through a three-dimensional approach, with the creation of digital models and Augmented Reality applications, it was possible to reconstruct behavioral and cultural aspects, expand the ability to visualize archaeological heritage and promote the use of applications as educational tools. The archaeological informative elements necessary for the creation of the Augmented Reality models came mainly from the descriptive analyzes of the archaeological remains and the scientific studies developed in recent years by several of the elements that integrate this project.

· THE MUGE SHELLMIDDENS ·

About 12 thousand years ago, like polar ice caps defined to melt and like sea waters rose progressively until reaching a level identical to that of today. In Portugal, this process of environmental change was characterized by an increase in temperature and expansion of forests, remaining as existing animals. This period of Earth's History is called Holocene, as an indication of the previous period, of the glaciations, called Pleistocene.
It is during the beginning of the Holocene that several cultural changes take place, developing the period known as Mesolithic. In Portugal, this phase of human history began in Muge some 8,200 years ago and lasted for about a millennium, with a decisive environmental and cultural change. Hunter-gatherers in the Center of Portugal accept a coastal strip and occupy the inland estuary of the Tagus River – the Magos, Muge and Fonte da Moça streams – developing new technologies and economic, social, and symbolic structures.
The first shells in Muge were discovered in April 1863 by Carlos Ribeiro as part of the creation of the Geological Chart of Portugal.

WHAT ARE SHELLMIDDENS?

The shellmiddens are essentially characterized by special dense shells highlighted in the landscape in the form of large artificial hills. There are also traces of the marine and terrestrial diet, hunting and gathering elements, habitat structures, and evidence of symbolic practices (elements of personal ornamentation and human burials) of the Mesolithic populations that inhabited the region. The bivalves play a prominent role, with the little lamejinha (Scrobicularia plana) and the cockle (Cerastoderma edule) being the most abundant species. Fresh and brackish water fish are equally numerous (for example, Lamna nasus, Myliobatis aquila, Acipenser sturi, Sparus aurata) and marine species have also been identified, which leads to the assumption of a navigability domain at some distance within the estuarine system and in the open sea.

THE DIET

The diet of the Mesolithic populations of Muge comprises very similar proportions of foods of marine and terrestrial origin. The study of the recovered faunal remains, which these communities hunted, fished, and collected a wide spectrum of animals. They mainly hunted rabbit, deer, wild boar, aurochs, roe deer, horse, and some carnivores such as the Iberian lynx. Birds will also be widely hunted, especially ducks, geese, and shorebirds as well as birds from land environments such as the bustard, partridge, and many other species.

The brackish water of the Tagus estuary reaching the region of Muge during the Mesolithic allowing a high aquatic biodiversity, thus fishing and the collection of cockles and clams constituted, in parallel, an important source of their livelihood.

TECHNOLOGY

Stone tools were fundamental in the daily life of Muge's hunter-gatherers. The most used raw materials were flint, quartzite, and quartz which, due to their distinct characteristics, were chosen to manufacture specialized tools destroyed for specific activities: for example, cutting and scraping wood, skin, bone, and haste, and hunting animals.
In Muge, the technology is rich and diversified, with an abundant presence of geometric microliths (triangles, trapezoids, and crescents), which were part of composite materials that were mostly taken care of for use as projectiles.
Of the tools, two stand out, both launched with a bow or thruster: the stone arrowheads, which were used to hunt terrestrial animals, such as bone spears or haste, which was used in catching fish, since the buoyancy of these materials made them easily retrievable on the surface of the water.

FUNERAL PRACTICES

The Muge shellmiddens are among the largest and best-known Mesolithic funerary assemblages in the world, with approximately 300 skeletons having been recovered in the last 150 years. These represent adult individuals, of both sexes, and non-adults of all age groups, from newborns to just over 50 years of age. Women had a height between 1.44 and 1.62 m, while men were a little taller with values ranging from 1.53 to 1.71 meters.
As in any period, there is great diversity in the treatment of the body after death, varying, for example, the location, position, and orientation of the bodies, as well as the associated votive objects (lithic materials, ornaments, ocher). We also found some evidence to suggest that some bodies were bandaged (possibly with skins or bark) before burial, which implies different processes, depending on the person and each shell maker.
Funeral practices are an essential source for understanding human behavior, particularly in the case of prehistory, where there are no written records, and they can tell us a lot about the customs, ideologies, beliefs, economics, and technology of our past.