| Entry: | The total station was set up today for its use in Trench 5. Two new steps were created along the western section of T5 along eastings 690 and 691.
SO was excavating a suspected pit fill (18307) and its cut (18308) in space 340 that respects F2428 in the north, F2413 on the west and is irregular in shape on the southern and eastern boundaries, making it very likely that these units could be animal disturbance.
EMM was excavating an arbitrary layer of room fill (18313, the same as 16859) in space 341, scraping away and removing a few centimetres that had dried out since last season. On completing this, she discovered that space 341 was divided roughly in to two areas, the western part being very compact with very few finds, in contrast to the eastern part that is mixed and contains a lot of large potsherds. Beneath arbitrary layer 18313 EMM opened layer 18314 which contained two areas of animal disturbance (18362, 18305) that were treated as separate units in order to reduce material contamination.
JFB was working on a possible pit (fill 18305, cut 18306) as was PTW (fill 18312, cut 18317). Both were very loose, shallow in depth and highly irregular in shape. Some disarticulated human remains were recovered from 18305. DO was excavating room fill 18317 in space 343.
OMV was working on a grey ashy loose layer (18310) that may be room fill in space 342 between buttress F5063 and wall F5051 that contained fragments of painted plaster (analysed moments after recovery using the portable XRF, which indicated that the painted lines were ochre due to the iron content). A cluster of finds (18315), mainly pottery was identified next to buttress F5063, however there is a strong possibiility that this unit may be contaiminated by backfill from the split sandbags installed at the end of last season. Arbitrary layer unit 18309 was created for space 343 (same as unit 16896) to remove a crust that had dried since last season and to remove any finds that may contaminate the remaining room fill.
Due to the shallow depths, irregular shape and character of the 'pits', it is distinctly likely that they are in fact concentrations of animal disturbance and indeed not anthropogenic. |
