| Entry: | Yesterday, while the Cambridge team was in Cappadocia, the rest of us made a nice trip to the Karaman museum and Can Hasan, where we had a look at French's trenches (unfortunately now used as rubbish dumps) and at the pottery.
Today, full team except Peter (in Istanbul) and Ezra who has left for home. Last day out for Jonathan and Catriona who did their documentation and also plotted all the possible EC architecture in trench 5 with David, Cordelia and the Total Station. Metin and Serkan were sent to the East mound, since we have to dig into graves, and there's not much soil to be moved. The Selcuk team is on seminary today.
Weather: really hot
In trench 5, the fill in grave feature 2404 was dug down with unit 13764, which contained mudbrick rubble towards the W end, and more smooth soil, albeit in the same matrix, towards the E. With this unit, we started to expose the skeleton 13778, and although we have taken the soil down to the level of the hips and right arm already, no head, upper body or left arm s visible yet. This is very puzzling, since the stone covering 13722 was completely intact. While digging down, however, the NW part of the lining construction 13757 which never looked as well-made as the rest, could not be traced downwards - yet? Tomorrow, when the skeleton is out (there is some time pressure as we have to get the graves out this week, since we are leaving soon), I'll ask Hanife to clean there more carefully. Maybe they dug into that grave from the side? Or did I not see a robbing pit that came from above soon after the burial, so before it was finally covered with the stones? Maybe the rest of the body will appear tomorrow.
Gulgun and Nejat traced the molehole system 13728 down to a very destroyed row of yellow mudbrick, which indicates possibly yet another grave. We won't go any further in this area, and also not go on with taking off topsoil as 13759, otherwise we all have to stay longer to get rid of the burials. So this next year! 13728 continues all the way up to grave 2404, so there is severe danger of confusing it with this burials' cut and fill. Despite I wasn't really sure if the soil indeed changed, I stopped there.
Sedef started to draw the coffin remains in grave 2403 and also whitish chalky spots that showed up after removal of the skeleton and cleaning in search for more coffin relicts.
Ingmar continued drawing in the 5 extension, this time the criss-cross pattern.
In trench 6, Tom's little sounding revealed that the plaster floor he got there is disturbed at various places by later pits etc., some of them arbitrarily dug by the soil he removed with the sounding. As far as I can see, trench 5, where I avoided - as in Troy - arbitrary boxes sectioning pits, did not yield less information on stratigraphy than trench 6 did. The layers still visible in the edges of the cuts after removal of the fill are definitely enough to find out about the stratigraphy.
Scott came and helped us digging the skeleton in grave 2454. Helen cleaned the skeleton in 2455, Naoise drew her profile in the 13834 sounding, while Nick did the plan of what became visible after he removed half of his pit fill13821. Both have mudbricks standing inclined on their edges, which indicates yet another type of burial. I had expected something like that (it reminded me of tile-covered byzantine graves in Troy). Something like this had appeared in the TP trench last year, as we were told by the anthro lab. Since these mudbricks are still well-covered by earth, we can leave them as they are.
Days of being puzzled about that or things like the pseudo-plaster we had at the beginning of the season show how good it would be to have a person who has been on the site for a very long time going round the trenches every day, so knowledge could be linked centrally - the database is no help in that. So having Catriona and Jonathan, who already now how a EC house tastes and smells, was a big help for us, and I hope they'll be back in 2007.
Today a number of finds bags with washed off writing were discovered by th potwashers. Shoot! Some of them were written by me, and I remember trying a finer permanent pen that would render my writing more readable, since the Sharpe script is really grossly to broad for my hand. Obviously that wasn't permanent enough. I also assume that other labels were written with the whiteboard pen, so photography supply should be separated. With the help of sunlight and logic, we could sort out most of the labels, though, fortunately.
All that stuff that goes wrong is part and parcel of the whole organization of this year's season. There should be all in all less people, and much more people who are able to work independently, and everyone should get his own stationary supply (impossible for 20 people!), so we do not spend time searching for pens all the time.Entered By: ER |
