Thursday, June 25, 2020

0438 - Discussing a new ditch section

Era company has been excavating a section in a new Chalcolithic ditched enclosure in Alentejo (they keep coming and coming). Here, me and Tiago, we were discussing the infilling of the ditch. This one shows a clear filling where natural processes were relevant, what is easily seen in the profile of the deposits, quite different from the horizontal deposits of anthropic origin that fill partially or totally several of the ditches of Perdigões and so many other ditches in other enclosures. The low density of materials confirms that process as well as a predominance of a side for the origin of the sedimentation. In the bottom, thin sandy layers are evidence of short and intermittent periods of  sedimentation of hydraulic origin, before a completely different processes of filling take place.  To the interpretation of the filling is now central to understand which side is the inside and the out side of the enclosure delimited by this ditch, something that the small survey does not allow to determine. Geophysics could help by providing a partial plan. And that should be the next step.