Today, just a few hours
before giving a talk about large ditched enclosures in the Lisbon Society of Geography through a collaboration with Era Arqueologia, I identified two new ones
in Alentejo while I was locating, in Google Earth, some emergency excavations done in
the context of Edia water supply network.
Here is the bigger one. Not
one of the largest (it has about 2,2 ha “only”), but quite near to two larger
ones (Salvada and Monte das Cabeceiras) that are already too close to each
other.
It looks that there is an
internal enclosure with a wavy ditch and a double ditch defining an outside
enclosure.
I do not know yet the
chronologies of these new site, but the density of ditched enclosures around
Beja is amazing.
At Perdigões, in front of
the gate identified in Ditch 10, by the outside, there are several pits. All of
them are of small depth (no more than 15 cm), except one, that is larger. It is
not yet totally excavated, so we do not know its depth and all that is inside
it.
However, the top layers
present interesting depositions.
In the top deposit there
was this ceramic “idol”.
Just below it, a complete
vessel lays in a “bed” of stones.
And in the next layer a
perfect half of a plate was deposited.
Again, intentionality is
easily recognized here as is the importance of parts and wholes.
