| Entry: | First cleaned the walls of my space 340 ( unit 16880) to make sure that I will not undercut them. It is the same story as in space 341: Phytoliths sitting on the wall face, therefore the fill nicely peeling off. I could follow the plaster quite some 15cm down, but at the level I am in now it stopped and the phytoliths are sitting directly on the mudbrick. I have exposed the wall face only in parts, in order to protect the rest while I am still working in the room. As visible on the north wall (2428), the plaster gets extremely crumbly once it is dry, and there is a lot of traffic in the trench.
After a vivid discussion about the strategy for mine and Katie's room I decided to go down only in a quarter of the room, in order to have profiles that will hopefully tell me when I am about to destroy the floor of the room.This will also speed up the whole thing, what is necessary as we have only one week of excavation left. This quarter turned out to keep me really busy, I had two small finds, a larger stone, unworked as I think (x8) and a beautiful white stone bead (x9). Furthermore I found two lumps of what seems to be plaster with red painting (sample 3). While cleaning it, I had the opportunity to have a closer look (or feeling) for what my roomfill is actually made of. It is heavily mixed, has limy spots, clayey spots, some more plaster lumps, and bits of burnt mudbrick, and some strange stuff that cames out in dark grey, really firm and sticky chunks. I found several large sherds some cm from the walls, I do not know if that means anything, but they are definitely more than in the middle of the space. |
