0309 – Back to Perdigões

Next week I will be back to Perdigões to finish the section in ditch 7. In this section the ditch is already 3 meters deep and, although it is quite narrow down there, the walls are still quite vertical. So it is not easy to estimate how much deeper it will go.

Note that the section is in the area where ditch 7 is starting to overlap ditch 8 (a previous Neolithic one). So the inner wall of the ditch (right in the image) is, in this area, constituted by the sediments that were filling the previous ditch. This filling, that goes until about 2 meters deep (ditch 8 was less deep), is constituted by deposits of earth with faunal remains and pottery shards. But this wall of earth was not eroded and it would have been easily if exposed to winter rains. This means that ditch 7, at least in this section, had to have been opened and rapidly filled.

And as you can see in the section, after it was filled (with a sequence of layers of stones, faunal – and human – remains and pottery shards) it was reopened through a recutting, then filled with layers of stones.

This is a stratigraphic sequence of openings and deliberate fillings that shows the nature of this ditch. A ditch that defines a inner enclosure that I now think that can be related to a later, complex and highly symbolic occupation of the central area of the natural theatre where Perdigões stands.