| Entry: | I see a data entry field called "sketch name" here on my data entry screen, but do not know how to fill that in and how we should name our daily sketches.
Full team today, with PFB and Gen working in their quarry trench 7 with the four workmen.
After breakfast I had to send TEB over to them for half an hour of punishment mattocking for the irresponsible destruction of a row of mudbricks of my beloved F. 2408 wall. Needless to say that HSL was his helping hand. I am sure the clever girl did that on purpose because she wants to make me and Peter think she is a hopeless case so we might send her over to the picture book grave F. 2416 or even to the Anthro lab for punishment. We won't do that, though.
But the EC never dies, so this event gave us the desperation to finally brush on top of the grey ashy area W of that wall. We had been pampering this area as a very loose and therefore untouchable EC midden ever since we discovered it last year, and now it has turned into yet two more rown of mudbricks.
It appears to be cut by a grave underlying F. 2404 which consists of at least one wall of grave lining (partly burned mudbricks pretty messed up by rodent activity and other disturbances). Utku and Ferda used unit 14217 to search for the disturbance that caused the N of the lining to be destroyed, which might also be the reason why a lone humerus fragment and a coffin nail were found there. They went with unit 14262 which they prefer to call a probable grave fill and attribute a cut 14261. I would rather call it a disturbance pit.
Zeliha and Alex dug down into the fill of grave F. 2416. In the morning we thought we had discovered a robbing fill 14254 and an original fill 14260 that was omly preserved on the S side. This assumption was corroborated by the fact that the only articulated bones visible were some hand phalanges close to the S side. After they dug deeper into 14262 though, a pelvis very much in good anantomical position came up, so we might have to abandon the idea of a robbing. I hopefully got some packing material for small finds today.
Zafer finally clarified the situation around grave F. 2419. We saw its foundation cut and backfill as well as a disturbance pit (14257 and 14258) cutting away its E end right up to the E profile of the trench 5 extension.
Katie H. and Maxime patiently worked their way through many tunnels of the rodent lair 13783 that still contained nesting material. Sonn they will write their M. Sc. thesis on the burrow architecture of Spermophilus citellus. Under that lair mudbricks seem to come up which I hope do connect with the line of plaster we got W of it.
The equally patient band Naomi, Ros, Ben and Katie K. worked their way through the ongoing spit 14217. Naomi exposed the outlines of a simple pit grave roughly parallel with F. 2416. We still have to clarify how they relate to each other. Another mudbrick lined grave seems to show up close to the N profile, and we are not sure if there's one more in between the two. But I am so glad that we finally got some more light into that messy dark area I could also not really make sense of.
It took me almost two weeks to find this years' trash page-turner of the Catal trash library. Last year it was the Da Vinci Code and the English Patient, the letter not being that trashy after all. Now it's a book called Mammoth by one Baxter. Looking forward to get to that book now.Entered By: ER |
