| Entry: | Team: everybody minus Ezra and Helen plus Jonathan and Catriona. Three members of the Selcuk team (Zeliha, Vildan, Nesime) joined us today, and the tent over trench 6 was put up today to provide shelter when the burials there are taken out.
Weather: pretty hot, not too windy
Visitors: Ian, Priority tour
In trench 5, Gulgun fully exposed the stones unit 13722 using unit 13733 and started drawing them together with Sedef after photos were taken.
Nejat and Mustafa first took down the somewhat hilly surface that was created by dealing with Tracey (13705) and the baby burial E of it (13713) to the level of the mudbrick grave (2403) and the presumably chalcolithic plaster in the SE corner (13726). After that, they dug down behind S of 13722 to create a proper section, now set back some 1,2m from the 690.00 E profile that just run over 13722.
Jonathan and Catriona dug out a system of complex interconnected disturbances and pits (units 13739 - 13742, 13745) to finally reach a damaged skeleton (13744), a good example for grave-looting that took place still within the time span it takes to completely decompose the articulation of the upper body. So part of the disturbances we got is due to grave "robbing" as well. I keep thinking about the reasons - in late roman and early byzantine times there weren't many grave goods. Reminds me of migration period and later cemeteries in Europe, were digging down into the graves was obviously good custom.
Gulay and Burcin continued digging down into the fill of grave 2403 using unit 13727 (lots of rodents disturbance), 13737 and 13743. While we still did not reach the base of its N mudbrick wall, the S wall seems to have been undercut, maybe during looting that also was the cause for the dislocation of a human scapula, patella and a rib that went with 13727. So by now, well preserved skeletons without any grave architecture, while nice architecture yields nothing. Yasar Bey, confirmed by Mustafa, told me that still today the locals build their graves using mudbricks.
In the E extension of trench 5, Ingmar and Helen scrutinized the strutures we got there while setting up for drawing. We can quite clearly see grey mudbricks with plaster (13735) on them just E of 13726, as well as yellow mudbricks N of that which obviously form the S border of a grave: the looser soil N of them shows a human skull and some long bones. However, we cannot trae the N border yet and decided to go down a few more centimeters tomorrow.
In trench 6, tedious cleaning (Naiose and Christoph) and drawing (Nick, Tom) continued. A hard grey roughly circular area (13823) still puzzles the team. There's the pit opinion supported by Peter, and there's the "we do not know, but it is not a pit" party (me and Christoph). Be it as it may, Naoise today cut the thing right trough the place of the small ashy pit (13808) which was either a posthole (me) or a fireplace (Peter). The section created, however, still puzzles us, and I still feel somewhat reluctant to dig it down as a negative structure.
Cleaning between there and the wall stub 13813 revealed that the grave we had seen there does not have mudbrick walls, but that it and a huge oblong oval pit both cut into mudbrick that somehow reminds us of the possibly chalcolithic stuff we got in trench 5 as well as in the NW corner of 6 (unit 13810).
While putting a nail into the trench for measurements, Christoph discovered a piece of red painted plaster (unit 13801 x11) that would pass as chalcolithic for Jonathan and Catriona.
The Selcuk threesome worked like a machine cleaning the SE corner and after six hours presented a clean Planum with a well-defined grave with mudbrick walls. Hope this gives them fun after their empty trench in the fields E oft the east mound.
Helen was summoned to take levels almost constantly, as was Tom yesterday. Maybe it would be a good idea to appoint this job to one person per day, so those capable of dealing with the machine do not have to abandon their work in the trench all the time. The old Total Station refuses to give as absolute x and y readings which require time-consuming calculations in Toms notebook all the time, since our reference peg is not at all on a full meter or anything. Would love to have one on full meters, with some concrete around to make sure its position and height is still the same next year.
Now that we got rid of all the insular erratic features in trench 5 that were created by our attempts to rescue the badly disturbed burials we exposed while taking off unit 13703, I like the looks of our trench much better. Had a good day despite only six hours of sleep and look forward to the Dervishes tonight.Entered By: ER |
