| Entry: | Connection breakdowns, meetings and football games have prevented me fro writing my diary for a few days. Today started like a real Monday (as Saturdays are virtual Mondays here).
On Thursday JMR and KJK had taken down with unit 16833 what looked like a massive homogenous mass of room infill in the corner of walls 2426 and 2408. In the planum I had had some doubts if there were some mudbricks, especially as BE had seen mortar lines there in 2006. But it looked completely homogenous in the section created by cut of grave 2416, and was not visible while taking it down at all. After a day of drying, however, the brown loose room infill became easily discernible from hard brownish-yellow mudbrick. This taught me another lesson on mudbrick walls and on believing in sections. Sometimes it seems as if the West Mound is playing tricks on me, and I had to hit sandbags and throw some stones around in Trench 7.
Meanwhile, JMR, KJK and MB gave the area a thorough scraping to finish 16833, and suddenly two more walls appeared and the whole area has become a new space (341)! At the same time, AH and JW cleaned and drew the area just N of space 341 and defined yet another space 340 - so that made my day again. Especially as SO had dug down one or two rows of mudbrick of 2413 the other day as they looked exactly as homegenous and like room infill as on the opposite side of the cut of 2416.
SO dug out moleholes that disturb room infill in the corner betweeen walls 2425 and 2426.
On Wednesday the most thrilling find was the part of a baby skeleton (unit 16835) that the Selcuk people brushed out in the SE corner of the grave cut of 2420. Some bones, fortunately, are still in situ close to wall 2424. After counseling with BB and LH from the Anthropology lab we covered the area and will soon tackle the room infill towards the S to find out whether the white lines visible in the bottom of the grave cut are the remains of a basket and whether the red patches there are a surface or floor.
The Selcuk team finished what was left of a disturbed grave in the NE corner of the trench, documented soil discolourations which might be a looting pit (16818) in another grave, and excavated a pit (16832) in the SE corner of the trench that cuts into EC walls there and is itself again cut by grave 2419. It contains some of the well-known tiles that served as a floor in may of the late graves, an iron nail and a lot of charcoal as well as big EC potsherds, most probably dug up from the room infill the pit is cutting into. X4 is half a vessel with the complete profile from rim to bottom. The best things in life always come unstratified. |
