0353 - Segments

For some time now I have been stressing the fact that some Portuguese ditched enclosures present evidences that the ditches are built by segments and/or are filled by segments. In this year campaign at Perdigões another situation was recorded, but for the first time to the early period of enclosure building in South Portugal (around 3500 BC).

Here is a section of Ditch 13 where a clear segmented filling can be appreciated. 

That tell us several things:

a) we cannot generalize to a ditch perimeter the observation done in one small section;

b) ditches have a complex biography of excavation, fillings, re-excavation and re-fillings;

c) those processes are mainly anthropic, intentional and meaningful;

d) as any other complex context, the excavation of ditches requires adequate inquiries, theoretical tools and methodological approaches.