Unit Book A16
A16 Synthetic View / Introduction / Topics

Aggregates and strata

Lorenzo Crescioli – September 2012

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The formal discrepancy

Each finding in the ground belong to a moment, longer or shorter, but a moment that is identified in a feature, i.e. a stratigraphic unit that correspond to an action. Also the various actions belong to a cluster of elements identified as a stratum. Stratum is in the grammar defined as “a cluster of elements arranged according to the type of contact, and sorted according to nesting criteria that result in discrete wholes. These wholes are defined by the congruence of the elements in contact (e.g., a series of pits cut into a single accumulation), and by broad elements that extend to an entire volumetric unit (e.g., a floor that covers the entire surface of a locus)”. A cluster of elements could form spatially an “aggregate”, i.e. a cluster of elements that are inferred to belong together. A room, a burial etc. The aggregates for their typology could be used for more than one single moment (often with small changes as the opening or the closening of a new door/window, so they can be assigned to different strata In A16 this is clear for burial a16 (reused for a second inhumation), or room a1 where two flanking wall were added later.

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