| Entry: | Today has been a fun day - was working with Katie H all day, doing the top layer in the southern half of the trench - this is the basic layer (14217) that has been assigned to the mixed deposits which cover the whole area of the trench, the sediment matrix into which was sunk all the graves and animal burrowing features discovered and dug last year. Soon after starting this layer we had to stop because we hit human bones.Then followed a journey of discovery, chasing layers, bricks, walls, animal burrows, and eventually a burial cut. A huge number of separate events have truncated and intersected over this grave, and it is a bit of a mess. Things won't be clear until it has been fully dug, and my never come straight, but at the moment it seems that the deposit of human bones we first uncovered (14219) is a group of bones thrown there as back fill, quite possibly from one of the graves aready removed, or a truncation/re-opening of the grave below it; in any case, this small group of bones is coming away, revealing a separate layer beneath it which appears to be contained within a brick-wall structure looking very much like a grave. Tomorrow will tell if this is true or not. In terms of sediments, 14219 is indistinguishable from 14217 which surrounds it on all sides and above - only the human bones mark it out as different.
Yesterday I also excavated two units - a small patch of charnel (human bones)(14214) in a definite cut (14215). This had definitely been truncated to the east and north, and all that remained was this small cluster of bones. The surviving cut was dug into the remains of a mud-brick wall running N-S through the trench.
The work is going reasonably well as far as I can see - there is definitely stuff appearing out of the various mounds that currently dominate the trench, and hopefully these will become structures of some sort eventually. Had some bad news about my Grandad yesterday evening, which has made today a bit more somber than usual. In a way though it's nice to have a bunch of very friendly people around who have all proved to be very good at just 'being there', in their own ways, which has definitely made things easier. I will have to go home for a few days next week; I wonder whether people in the trench will notice I'm gone or not. 3,000 miles, Turkey to lil' old Hockley is suddenly not so far after all....Entered By: Alex Pryor |
