0110 - Overlapping ditches

This is an important issue for ditched enclosures understanding that hasn’t been researched as it deserves in Iberia. Here is a situation from Perdigões that we just started to approach.

 In sector P we open an area to research the overlapping of ditches 7 and 8. The first observation is that, contrary to what we assumed by the geophysics magnetogram, ditch 8 is older than ditch 7. In fact, it is ditch 7 that cuts ditch 8, and partially “walks over it” in the excavated section.

 

 

And that is really odd. Why open a ditch (which implies a lot of work and effort) in the bed rock, and then cut just partially, in small distances, a previous ditch? Why not use more of that previous ditch?  Or, why not fully avoid that previous ditch?

It seems that they just wanted to cut a new ditch, with a wavy plan, with no regard to previous ditch 8. But, if we look to the magnetogram, ditch 8 is a concentric mach to previous ditch 6. And why the ditch has part f its trajectory inside ditch 7, and then sudden  get outside, and then curved to be over it, just to get in again?

The conclusion is that no easy modern rational explanation can deal with these strange practices of opening ditches at Perdigões. We must keep our minds opened in the presence of these enclosed spaces.  The previous seems to condition the posterior, but in very complex ways not easy to explain.