| Entry: | A long time since my last entry but various excuses can be given - illness, backlog of unit sheets to check (which are now more or less upto date) and the fact that little new has happened. First a note on the unit sheets; the completion of these is not always very good and some people are clearly doing it better than others. In many cases it is small things missing which can easily be forgiven and found (such as XYZ on samples or x-finds) but in others, whole parts are missing, especially the discussion. I should be coming back to the people concerned and getting them to do it, but not only does the checking happen often weeks later, but I may know the person concerned just isn't disciplined enough to do it. It really shows who the professional archaeologists are (or who have worked in field archaeology for any length of time), and the sad thing is that I think some people learn very little while they are here - for all the teach-ins and prompt sheets, it seems to have little effect without intensive in-field training and you cannot do this while trying to run a site as well. My work load is at least doubled in post-excavation by this problem.
Any how, enough moaning; over the past week or so, work has continued on taking the foundation deposits out in their 2 metre squares and we are nearly all down to the third layer which continues under the outer shell walls of Building 1 and has been picked up in the inter-building deposits to the east (Space 73). The only parts within the walls remaining is under part of Platform F.13 near the wall F.3 with paintings which has not come off yet due to conservation work on the plaster. However, we have taken off top spits off some of this third layer which, as I said continues under the walls; however, in the southwest, a plaster line was found the other day running east-west just north of the south wall F.4 of Building 1, so maybe the outer layout at least of the next building will not be that different from ours. The internal wall found in the eastern part seems to actually stop halfway rather than be truncated so maybe our next building has three rooms, a central room with two side rooms whose accesses are at opposite ends. This though is still very tentative and we need to expose more. Work has slowed down, partly because of the burials and the painting, partly because I seem to have been half-staffed the past week, either due to illness or holidays. Chad and Kate are now away, and Ali has been sick a lot recently. I have been using the workmen Taner and Mustafa a lot more for digging - the layers are fairly straightforward and they are both very good, with a good eye, not only for finding interfaces, but stopping and calling me when something is significant. Indeed they work better and faster than some of my team, but unfortunately they cannot do the recording and if I use them too much it creates too much paperwork for me to follow. If they could be trained however..
When well, Ali has been working in Space 73 and also one of the workman, Taner, when Ali has been absent. They have removed the deposits overlying the third layer which continues inside the building and which shows interesting slopes on the north side and in part along the west edge by wall F.7. These may be natural slopes or cuts - if the latter, this is interesting because it may suggest the foundations of Building 1 were cut into it. From one point of view this is supported by the fact that in places this layer outside the building is much higher than that inside; but from the other, these slopes/cuts are not regular or at all continuous. I know Ian likes the idea of a cut but this was earlier on, for the top ashy layer; I am fairly certain that if there was any cuts, it was not to this layer (which is a foundation infill) but this third layer we are down onto now. I think what we need to do is remove the two end east and west walls, get sections through the inside and outside of the building and check for cuts. This will also give us a wider area to work in for the next building, although I do not think we can do this for the north and south walls as these directly abut other buildings.
The last two 'foundation' burials have been worked on, Bashak on F.211 and Naomi on F.209; with the former, which is now out, we found an infant over the head of an adult. Amongst the bones were traces of braids (figures-of-8) in salts or phytoliths which probably represent ribbon/cords around clothing or sacking (hair was one possibility but the fibres proved to be too thin under the microscope) and with the adult was found a yellowish residue which could be anything at this stage (?leather, felt). With F.209, similar salts/phytoliths were found. Naomi should have finished this tomorrow and then we can remove the rest of the foundation deposits. What I really want to do however is get rid of the rest of the wall F.3 as it is such an eyesore; hopefully Ali can finish this as Evan has now taken cores for counting the layers of plaster and checking where paintings are in the sequence. Just under two weeks of fieldwork left now and as long as we recover enough of the groundplan of the next building I will be happy so we know what we are dealing with next season.Entered By: Gavin Lucas |
