0277 – A ditch for a palisade

This is how the filling of a ditch for a palisade looks like. 

A level of stones and others of clay by the interior and the dark sediment in the outside part of the ditch, where the wood must have been. And practically no archaeological materials inside. It is Coelheira 3, near Santa Vitória, Beja, South Portugal. Excavated by the company Omniknos  (for EDIA), it will be published soon in Apontamentos de Arqueologia e Património nº10, 2015.

0211 - Wood constructions

 I have been suggesting that we have several evidences of wood constructions in portuguese prehistory that could be similar to some wood henges or palisades of Europe. One of those evidences is the area C of Outeiro Alto 2 (Valera e Filipe, 2012 pdf). I will talk here about that in the next post.

Today I present the strange case under excavation (by Omniknos/Era): 145 pits, with no archaeological material inside, very close to each other, but with no overlaps, producing several aligned rows. They are clearly for large posts (trunks) and do not define a circle, but an elongated area, partially curved. In the outside curved row an interruption is visible and might correspond to a passage.

This is a very strange context. If it is prehistoric (there are several prehistoric contexts nearby), it reinforces the idea that many pits are post holes and that we have to have notion of their spatial distribution to detect the kind of structures they belong to (as it happened at Outeiro Alto 2).

Detail of the outside curved row of pits

0078 - Ditches and palisades

This association is frequently assumed for ditched enclosures, but is rarely demonstrated. In what concerns Portuguese enclosures, we have some short notice on a possible inside palisade in Juromenha Neolithic ditched enclosure and we have the images of the inner enclosure of Perdigões (see here) and of some of the lines of Moreiros (see here) that suggest the existence of palisades. But, for the majority of sites already excavated or prospected by geophysical methods, that evidence is missing and the available data does not allow generalised positive statements about the association of palisades to ditches (and even less of earth banks).
Nevertheless, some sites do suggest that association. One of those sites is Senhora da Alegria, where a larger ditch seems to be associated to a smaller one that runs in parallel, and could be an infrastructure to support a palisade. This is not clear yet, for sometimes the smaller ditch seems to slightly overcome the bigger one, but that could be related to readjustments in time and the hypothesis remains.
Those structures are from a Late Neolithic and generally contemporaneous of the others ditched enclosures that also suggest, as referred above, the presence of palisades. But the Chalcolithic ones do not present the same evidence. Has this association a chronological significance? A question to have in mind.