In the last three years we have been working at Alentejo (in the south of Portugal) digging several prehistoric

contexts. These contexts has been identified due the construction of a water pipeline promoted by EDIA SA. Most of the contexts are negative structures. These kind of features are traditionally interpreted in terms of the contents of their fills: as domestic discard areas (whenever there are sherds, bones or other kind of fragmented things); as storage structures (in the examples where there are seeds); or as burial architecture (in those cases where there are human skeletons). Regarding these interpretations there is a dichotomy between something that is fill (from which we define a function to the structure), and the pit itself that is understood as a kind of architecture. With these two posters we aim to discuss such dichotomy. Instead of looking at the pits (a building) and its contents (from which we define its functionality) we try to see both as architecture practice. In this point, I would like to say that we were quite inspired by Lesley McFadyen thought. Lesley has been working with us in the last year and it has been a grateful experience as we had the opportunity to change and discuss several ideas. In the poster about Horta do Jacinto we discuss how different bodies and artefacts entailed different space organizations. By considering the relationships between what is put inside the pit and its internal configuration, it seems that once we look at the feature as architecture then the shape of the pit is as important as what is inside of it, and not just as a way to think about a functionality but to understand it as an architectural device. Structure 1 is constituted from actions that bring together soil, sculpted shape and bodies. Furthermore the distribution of fragments of objects keep memory at work in these spaces: they create a material tension between how things were and how things are now. Architecture here is not just a building activity, it constructs other possibilities for how humans, animals and artefacts relate to each other in the world. In the poster about Vale das guas 3 we discuss some topics aspects of fragmentation and how it connects with architecture. We highlight a case of a deposition of a fragment and a case of a entire vassel that was put inside as an assemblage of sherds in a process that, multiplying / fragmenting a unit, divided it according to a configuration previously acquired (the parts of the container) for later re-assemble it in a deposition, not as a unit,

but as units that once were part of the same element. And that is part of an architectural practice that gives meaning to the practices of architecture that this structures entail. Fragmentation and deposition connects through architecture practices becoming ways to shape space. With these ways to discuss these negative structures, we are trying to develop an approach which, rather than a building record exercise, tries to go further in the understanding of how architecture is a practice within people negotiate their worldly conditions of living.