| Entry: | Today was my first day back on site after a week in the labs. Kristen and I spent the day planning and removing various layers from the floor of building 65 (the whole building is started to be taken down now). Everything was really fragmentary and hard to follow, but we started by removing two very thin layers of phytoliths (units 15703 and 15705), and took samples from these for the starch specialist. We think that perhaps the phytoliths are from the roofing materials used when the house was built. Planning and removing these took most of the morning, and just before lunch we started on unit 15710 - a sort of ashy layer perhaps associated with a nearby burnt patch. Several stones and a horn core were lying on the surface of this. Again, the layer was extremely fragmentary and patchy. The layer below is rather orangy, a bit harder, with a lot of charcoal, obsidians, stones, etc, visible in it. No unit number for that yet.
All in all, most of the day was spent cleaning and planning. As always, the most depressing words in the English language are "Just give that a bit of a clean" - not that cleaning isn't necessary, obviously, just time-consuming, and because I dislike it so much I tend to become obsessed in my quest to make the area spotless and prove to myself that I'm not shirking. Still, it's nice to be holding a trowel.Entered By: Eleri Cousins |
