| Entry: | Today ran very smoothly. The organisation was much better and everybody seemed to be getting on with their own units and features.
I would like to write about individual units, but am waiting for a lot of unit sheets (theoretically completed!) to be returned to me to be checked and entered on the database.
Jemima and Alex completed a 'pit' today. The fill (16816) contained a large stone and a large pot vessel concealing some phytoliths. The cut of this pit (16821) was fairly ambiguous and difficult to follow. Jemima and Alex made the best effort they could out of a very difficult pit, and made an excellent start to writing up unit sheets, which were complete. An archive sample and flotation sample was taken of the fill, and both units were photographed and drawn.
Maxim started another apparent pit in the north-east corner of the trench. The fill is (16822) and the cut is (16823). He has also made a good effort to keep an accurate record of the units. Unfortunately it appears that the pit is actually a concentration of animal disturbance, heavily mixed. For this reason it was decided that it would not be helpful to take a flotation sample or to dry sieve the contents.
Dan and Sonia were cleaning out the remnant units from last years feature 2416 (a late grave). It appears that the cut of the grave may not have been defined last year, and so the remainder was removed today to expose a chalcolithic wall.
Jana and Katy appeared to have a similar experience to Alex and Jemima. They also excavated a pit with a cut (16810) and fill (16811) that was difficult to distinguish. Both pits were visible on the surface from the cleaning, fairly distinctly, and hence were possible to draw. However, once the excavation of their fills began, the cut became increasingly diffuse and difficult to distinguish from the fill.
The Selcuk team are making real progress. The remaining brick lining from two graves, features 2419 and 2420 (last year), were lifted. In 2420 some bricks still need to be lifted - but it is undecided whether they are apart of the same feature, or in fact the lining of another late burial. Hopefully this will be resolved tomorrow.
I have been making sure finds bags are sufficiently labelled, and today, I was satisfied that all finds were sorted and were labelled correctly, and have no doubt that this good practice will continue for the rest of the season.
We are coping in our trench with the sparse array of equipment, not necessarily up to our initial expectations. You have to make the best of what you've got.
I feel slightly guilty that I have not really been excavating this year. I think that my role in waltzing around, trying to help where I can, monitoring unit sheet records, and generally making sure all is well, has restricted my available time to commit myself to a unit. I would really like to get stuck back in the south-west corner of trench 5 where there is a whole load of room fill that needs beasting out (assuming that it is till fill!). I hope that no one thinks I'm being lazy, and will try my best, when I can, to get stuck into the archaeology. I think this will be possible once everyone is used to the running of things and are able to be largely independent of my help.
Looking forward to tomorrow and think that my intentions of writing a short diary have been dashed! |
