No, because when I rubbed the carbon between my fingers, it's hard as a rock and very gritty. Agglomerated material would not be hard and gritty. The carbon almost certainly came from the piston crowns and ring lands.
There is no way to tell, as the first time I changed the filter was at 21,000 miles. My speculation, based off the increased metals between 16,000 and 21,000 miles is that the high RPMs going up and down the mountain passes caused the filter to go into bypass when the two stage oil pump kicked into high side at high RPMs. While in bypass at high flow rates, there is no way to stop turbulence in the filter from picking up the carbon and recirculating it through the engine. I could have reduced the chance of carbon recirculation by changing the filter and would have had I known this much carbon would come off the internals. Esters really do clean. Like I stated before, lesson learned the hard way.