| Entry: | Yesterday we had a great but tiresome field trip together with the Poznan team and Nurcans pottery lab to Asikli Hoyuk, Tepecik-Ciftlik, Gelveri, Golludag, the Nigde Museum and Kosk Hoyuk.
The day before, Thursday 05.07.07, everybody was fit and healthy in the trenches.
Alex and Zeliha started to expose the skeleton 14267 in the snazzy grave F. 2416. As the dead's right hand was exposed very early and at a considerably high level, we first assumed the grave has been dug up at some point. This view was corroborated by the fact that we could distinguish a darker fill, mixed with lots of brick fragments, surrounded by a fringe of lighter brown material in the W, E and S of the mudbrick lining. Therefore we started to excavate the inner fill first as a possible disturbance (14259). Only when the coffin nails began to line up pretty well along the interface (14268) of the two fills and the rest of the skeleton proved to be completely intact, Zeliha had the idea that 14259 is the inside of the coffin, whereas 14260 is the grave fill around it. Frank is now able to plot the nails in three dimensions to show how the coffin looked like.
Helen and Tom (with a well-behaving TEBMA) finished 14217 to expose an area of most likely EC room infill of mudbrick collapse containing large potsherds much alike last year's unit 13796 on the other side of wall F. 2408 which has now become a pretty wide thing. Very close to the E profile there are again mudbricks coming up that might be the opposite wall of a room some 3m wide. Alas, digging the infill has to wait until several pits truncating it and the badly disturbed grave with the burnt orange mudbricks are taken out.
In this grave, Ferda and Utku worked at defining and documenting a soft brown disturbance 14262 under which unburnt yellowish mudbricks appear that are connected to one lump of burnt mudbrick ca. 0,5m apart from the preserved wall of that grave. So I think they may eventually be the E wall of that grave lining missing so far.
Maxime and Naomi dug out the big animal lair 13783 at the N profile, and it proved very difficult to distinguish Spermophilus infill from the soft and crumbly mudbrick there, so yet again a small sliver was taken away (part of that wall went away when the workmen started to dig in the trench 5 extension). To the S, a rubble infill similar to the ones mentioned above was found and exposed very well.
Ben started to excavate the fill 14264 which is right in the N of F. 2416 and will, given its elongate shape and EW orientation, most probably be a grave. I assume the head will be gone, as the pit is cut by unit 13739 (dug in 2006).
As we decided that the hardish horseshoe-shape within unit 14213 is most probably not a structure, Ros and Katie K. dug it away after a working shot in favour of a whitish plaster-like surface.
Zafer started to excavate the disturbance 14257 and 14258 in the E of grave F. 2419 close to the E profile. Alas, my hopes that this disturbance would be heavy and save as the effort of extending the trench towards the E, were proved ill-based today.
On Saturday, 07.07.07, the mudbrick lining of the grave mudbricks re-appeared in ca. 10cm depth. By accident, however, the bottom of the disturbance was not regonized, so a part of the grave fill was dug out right down to the bones with that disturbance unit. Articulated vertebrae, obviously of an individual lying on its side, were exposed. Zafer will cover them to protect them from drying out while the Selcuk team extends the trench.
As Zeliha as unfortunately left us for another excavation, Utku joined Alex in drawing and lifting the bones from grave 2416.
In the grave around unit 14262, I could not detect any soil movement today. I suppose the two new Selcuk team members, Faris and Osman, were shown how to deal with the documentation system.
As we get more and more into EC features, I had to steer clear from instructing and helping the Selcuk team most of the time today. Also Naomi and Frank were almost entirely occupied by Photography and Total Station. Things are speeding up now, and I look forward to stratified EC units this week. After all that patient poking in boring moleholes (most recently 15300 just N of 14262), Katie K. and Ros will be rewarded with a substantial wall:
Jonathan Last kindly joined us for a few hours today, and I was grateful we could discuss the tricky NW corner as well as the pitfalls of the mound's misbehaving mudbricks together. He thinks that the bricks in the W profile, still visible in the horizontal with a white plaster line, are already EC as well as the mudbricks around the mole hole 13783 that go with plaster line 13798. Taking out a small pit 14277, Ray traced the plaster line 13798 all the way W, until we lose it as it is most likely truncated by a pit to be excavated tomorrow. There is another row of mudbricks S of it, and we think this wall will eventually link up with the one in the NW corner.
Ben continued digging out 14264 and found our first grave good of the year, a small bronze ring.
While Tom dug out a very heavily molholed pit 14270 in the rubble abutting 2408 to the W that seems to cut pit 14251 as well, Helen took down the last (W) part of the mudbrick lining 13725 of grave 2403. The backfill of the grave cut 13751 was virtually without any finds. As expected, a section of wall 2408 was exposed behind it.
Unit numbers: a new set of unit numbers were taken and in error already used by some team members. So nrs. 15300 to 15302 were already given away whilst there were still plenty of numbers available in the 14200 to 14299 set. This just in case irritation occurs.Entered By: ER |
