Introduction

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CD-11 Introduction

The area of Civitate D contains an unusual topographic feature. There is a swath of rocks, both large and small, roughly 4 meters in width, that first becomes clearly visible about 20 meters from the workshop and continues around the slope of the hill in a northeasterly direction. The feature terminates briefly (for about 4 meters) near a pathlike feature which intersects it, and then picks up again and appears to make a turn towards a more northwesterly direction. The feature itself is made up of a variety of sizes of rock. Some are large, immovable boulders, while others are medium in size, roughly 20-30 cm in diameter. The space between the large and medium rocks is filled in for the most part by many small shards of rock. Some of the particularly large rocks appear to form a line and some of these rocks have something of the appearance of facing.

The curious orientation of these rocks in particular in addition to the presence of the wall in

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the T-42 and T-43 area was a cause of interest. This led to the decision to drop a series of trenches in this area to better understand the topographic feature, and in particular, to determine the nature of the rock spread: whether the feature is a man-made feature such as a wall, a naturally occurring feature, or a naturally occurring feature that was exploited or augmented in the ancient period. The possibility of the presence of a wall in this area is particularly interesting in light of the recent excavation of the retaining wall in T-42A, B, and C and in T-43A. One would expect that the retaining wall present in these trenches might continue along the slope in the Civitate D area, though the possibility of a different/unrelated wall, of a retaining or defensive function defensive wall should not be entirely discounted.

CD-11 aims to answer these questions. In addition, CD-11 endeavors to trace the orientation and extent of the aforementioned topographic feature and to search for any datable evidence which might help determine the chronology of the feature. The relationship of this topographic feature to the pathlike feature will be explored in CD-12 (JMH II).

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