Thule 38-41

46 Davide Domenici, Imma Valese
rotunda, 24 meters in diameter, represented by a wall-trench with inner
postholes; apparently it was reconstructed one or two times (KELLY J.E.
1996a; VALESE I. 2010/11: 146; PAUKETAT T.R. 2013: 88). Along the outer
margin of the circular wall trench, a series of radially located oval post pits
were probably hosting pole buttresses whose structural function was to hold in
place the rotunda’s walls, contrasting the outward push due to the weight of
the building’s roof, whose existence is also suggested by the presence of post
pits in the center of the rotunda (PAUKETAT T.R. 2013: 82-88)(4). Beside these
two buildings, Lohmann-phase archaeological evidences were extremely scarce
also in Tract 15B, as well as in the Merrell Tract I, where three post pits –
approximately located along the E-W axis of the Plaza – were the only features
that could be tentatively assigned to this phase (KELLY J.E. 1996a: 23). The
general lack of Lohmann houses or refuse pits indicates that domestic activities
were no longer carried out in the Plaza, now used for ceremonial or political
activities that included the use of the rotundas and the raising of marker posts.
In our excavations to the west of the two Lohmann rotundas we did not
identify any trace of a possible Lohmann-phase mound fill (as suggested by
PAUKETAT T.R. 2013: 82; fig. 4.20), since the area seem to have been heavily
borrowed and then re-filled with refuse midden in Moorehead times (see
below). This lack of evidence due to later landscape modifications prevents us
from either confirming or discarding the hypothesis of the presence of a low
mound, first proposed by J. Kelly (1997: fig. 8.4). What we can state, on the
other hand, is that at least some of the large “midden” areas detected by W.
Wittry in the northern portion of Tract 15B were not “basal” middens that
impeded the complete identification of later features (such as the northern part
of F388 or the northeastern quadrant of F238/389), as supposed by Pauketat
(2013: 82), but rather areas where later, Moorehead-phase, borrowing and
re-filling activities had obliterated parts of the earlier Lohmann and Stirling
features.
During the Stirling phase (AD 1100-1200) the West Plaza continued to be used
for non-domestic activities, as indicated by the almost complete lack of
unambiguous Stirling-phase domestic structures. The most important change
that took place in the Plaza at some moment during the Stirling phase was the
demolition of the F238/389 rotunda and the building of two, probably coeval
wall-trench structures, named Compounds A and B/C, respectively a circular
and a square one(5). Both of them had a palisade-like appearance, with evenly