| Entry: | Work has been really speeding up now - the make up deposits for Building 1 are being excavated fairly rapidly and it is having a tremendous impact on the appearance of the site. As far as we can ascertain, these deposits consist of single episode infills/dumps of material and so far at least three main bands have been identified: a top ashy layer thickest at the west and feathering out, overlying a middle layer of pale yellow brown, homogeneous sandy silts with some demolition inclusions (mortar, brick and plaster) which is thickest at the eastern end. The different thickness and slope of these upper two deposits suggests infilling from two sides, east and west, and generally the material lips up more at the corners suggesting they were dumping from here. The soil around the edges is also more compact which may relate to constant trample when dumping material into the centre. Under all these is another ashy layer but more mixed with building material as well and this may relate to the next building below of which the top is now showing in three places.
About half a metre from the east main wall, another wall runs north-south just a quarter of a metre below the base of Building 1 - this has plaster on both faces, the western side is particularly thick and at the southern end of the wall as it is exposed so far, there appears to be a small plastered ‘basin’. The northern end has not yet been traced and I am reluctant to expose too much until everything is down to the same level. Another wall was found today coming out and under the western wall for about half a metre and plastered just on its southern face - it seems to also have a small edge of floor attached. This wall has certainly been truncated in antiquity, possibly during the levelling and foundation construction for Building 1. Together with the other north-south wall found in the ‘96 sondage just west of F.3 partition wall, the plan of another building is emerging but still too partial to reconstruct. What does seem clear however is that whatever is going on, it bears no structural relation to Building 1 and already there are worries about what this will mean in terms of excavation strategy. If the building or buildings below extend beyond the present limit of excavation, it will mean we have two basic choices - to excavate the relevant adjacent buildings to Building 1 (wholly or partially) or to only excavate this new building or buildings partially. Given that there is only so deep we can go anyway within the confines of Building 1 before we ought to step in, the former seems the most sensible option.
Chad has now completed the burials under platform F.13 and the foundation for the platform and is out of his 1 metre area in which he has been confined for the past month; Lucy and Naomi have been working on new infant burials found in the upper ashy layer, placed just on the east side of wall F.3 and these are now out but a new one was found the other day which has suffered some disturbance. It is interesting to consider the line of these ‘foundation’ burials with respect to the ‘house’ burials in that the latter form an L-distribution along the north and east while the former form an L- distribution along the north and west. However, these are also much fewer and perhaps this is a false impression, especially since the deepest one found under F.40 appears to be cut from much lower down than the rest of the ‘foundation’ burials and may even be of an earlier phase than them.Entered By: Gavin Lucas |
