plow zone?

[mercenary]

DDL wrote:

quote:Over the southern half of the town sealed by the topsoil there is a layer of dark earth which has material truncated out of features that it is sealing,and going through the finds in postX with the pot person she explained that quite a bit of pot from the dark earth fitted pot still in the features,and when their location within the dark earth layer was plotted they were directly over the features.

This scenario makes me wonder once again about something that I have long suspected about "dark earth" horizons. Namely that they are not homogenous deposits of re-worked plough-soil truncating all below them, but a mix of dumped organic deposits and cut features. The fitting pot from the "dark earth" may have been within a cut feature partly cutting the dark earth but extending into lighter deposits or subsoil below. Because it is notoriously difficult to see cuts in dark deposits the machining is usually done to the lighter material below.

Advances in the understanding of post-Roman urban deposits seem to depend on how well the excavator digs and interprets this problem "dark earth". I've long hoped for the invention of dark earth visibilty goggles . Until then maybe a more North-American system should be applied rather than the use of the big yellow trowel.