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Jsut had this query... and had to confess I was under the impression that Primary fill was indeed that... the first etc...
Any smarty pants out there that can gainsay that?
heres the basic question:
Quote:quote:I assumed that a primary fill was (logically) the one stratigraphically following the cut in sequence. I am told that this is not necessarily so, and that there are also secondary and tertiary fills that also may not correlate with the second and third fills in sequence. Further information than this I could not obtain. What is the basic rundown on primary, secondary, and tertiary fills?
:face-huh:
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu
For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he
Thomas Rainborough 1647
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Is it something to do with re-cuts? But even then any remnants of the "primary" fill would still be, chronologically, the "primary" fill, even if it was only two inches below ground level and the re-cut was six foot deep!
Was the e-mail marked "April Fool" and they'd got their days mixed up?!
[?]:face-huh:
My brain hurts now and the other half, who's also one of our kind, has stopped listening.....
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Glad its not just me who is baffled... ! Primary has the effect of being the first.. otherwise 3= 6 and black = white and the entire fabric of time collapses
[xx(][?]
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu
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I think it must be to do with recuts, as Angie said.
Primary, secondary and tertiary fills may also be understood from a taphonomic perspective and not just as a sequence of fills bottom to top in the chronological sense.
In the former case, a primary fill constitutes the first process of deposition in a feature, such as a pit. Normally this is the breaking in of the side of the pit so that the primary fill is composed of redeposited natural, which ought to be sterile (that is if there isn't an intentional dumping/ deposition due to human agency occurring in the pit).
The secondary fill can taphonomically be understood to represent the erosion of surrounding topsoil into the pit, which will include residual cultural material.
The tertiary fill will then be represented by the deposition of material that is deposited through wind- or waterborne deposition, effectively sealing the feature (the latter may not always be present due to later erosion/ truncation of the feature).
If a re-cut occurs, the same sequence of processes will obviously re-occur, so that a second 'primary fill' can occur above a secondary fill in a feature.
In a normal case scenario, i.e. whenever humans didn't interfere with the natural process by depositing or dumping material or recutting, primary-secondary-tertiary fill will represent the bottom-to-top sequence.
I think this is all based on observations taken from experimental case studies.
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Yup, just as i_love_rocks said. It's all to do with formation processes. Its trying to look at how the deposit got there, not just whether the fill is the first in the feature.
There is a good few papers which I can't quote off the top off my head. But if you talk to anyone who has worked on a framework site, I am sure they could bore you with it in infinate detail. It does make some some aspects of PX easier.
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However, surely the recut is indeed a second cut feature, therefore has its own series of number associated with that cut...
so Cut [1] is filled with [2], [3] etc... a recut is a separate event, causing a new and distinct feature, even if on the same line, it is separated temporaly from the original cut, and several processes have taken place beforehand.. so this 'new' cut (say [7]) has its own sequence of primary fill, secondary fill etc... which are unrelated chronologically to the original primary fill, secondary fill... etc They are in essence separate features albeit in the same location...
Like a wall... you build a wall... you knock down wall and rebuild in the exact same place... this does not make it the same as the first wall.?
It is still a stratigraphic sequence
Fill [tertiary]
Fill [secondary]
Fill [Primary]
Recut
Fill [tertiary]
Fill [secondary]
Fill [Primary]
Original cut
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu
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Quote:quote:
If a re-cut occurs, the same sequence of processes will obviously re-occur, so that a second 'primary fill' can occur above a secondary fill in a feature.
I'm not sure this explanation works. If a pit was re-cut then the sequence would be for example:
(tertiary fill of re-cut)
|
(secondary fill of re-cut)
|
(primary fill of re-cut)
|
[re-cut]
|
(secondary fill of primary cut)
|
(primary fill of primary cut)
|
[cut]
I.e. stratigraphically there are two primary fills and two cuts - the recut itself being a stratigraphic entry.
The post-hole is an interesting feature that can explain this scenario. The posthole is cut, then a post is placed within the hole (the post is the primary fill), the post is then packed (secondary fill). At a later date the post is withdrawn (i.e. the primary fill is removed) and the resulting void silts up. This silting up of the void that the post previously occupied is the tertiary fill, however its position within the cut is that of the primary fill.
I think this could explain the phenomenon which is being described.
All the best
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Yes. Site formation processes. Not taphonomy.
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@BAJR host and tmsarch
yes...true...but only if single-context recording is employed. In some recording systems 'cuts' are not recognised as separate stratigraphic events if they occur within one feature (for some stupid reason...). some continental re
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i_love_rocks,
Sorry for being a pedant. Its just a bug-bear of mine.
Interesting to hear that some recording systems don't record cuts within features. This must shorten the presumed duration of a site or present problems when encountering, for instance, Bronze Age pottery in a lower fill which is partially re-cut and filled with a material that contains Roman pottery. How does this work with post-holes cut into backfilled ditches when the nature of the feature has changed dramatically?
S
