| Entry: | 24th August. Extremely hot, difficult to keep going. I wanted to work again at 5pm but was too exhausted. F279 is still there - it is disappearing, but not fast enough for my liking. Today I removed the grey bricky stuff 3648 into which the vertical white moulded marl 3399 had been inserted, and also the white marl 3634, which together with 3648 made a semi-circular 'platform'. Beneath 3634 is another layer, still over the lower part of 3300, which is falling apart in the area where I tunnelled to examine its extent and angle, because now it is just a thin skim a few millimetres thick. I also took off some remnants of orange and grey layers around the vertical southern side of F279, which seem to run underneath, suggesting that they wrapped over the feature at some time. I keep thinking it's just another two days' work, but I've had three days this week and it's not finished. Jim hasn't been up there the past two days, which would have speeded things up a bit as one can plan/record one deposit which the other is excavating another. I feel again that this could be rather collapsed/squashed roofing of bins. Yesterday during the Space Tour in Building 5, which was dealing with the partitioning of space, I was looking across at Mark's bins and wondering what they would look like if a heavy weight pushed them sideways. There are similarities to what I have, but not strong ones yet. Shahina says she thinks it is collapse, but that doesn't answer the question of what it was before it collapsed. It definitely isn't just a wall, because it is full of moulded elements, and deposits wrapped around or inserted into one another, and walls just aren't like that. The only walls I can think of at present that could be like that are bin walls - plastering/wrapping layers could cover both sides, and extra layers could be wadged on to strengthen sagging areas, while curved horn-like parts could be openings in the side or roof. Alternatively it is a moulding in Mellaart style, but I don't see what it would have been. I'm now not sure it is fixed to the wall - I never was sure, but yesterday I cleared away some deposits at the extreme west, by the wall, on the south face, and decided they were part of the room fill 2858. It then looked a little as though the end of this feature could be sticking into the crawl-hole, giving the impression of being right against the wall but actually going through the wall (at least, the hole in the wall). I want to get down to sorting this out, but it is still so slow, and I only have three more working days before I have the Prehistoric Society tour to do, so I may not find out answers to these questions. I'll just have to rip it all out after all…
Too tired to do any lab work 5-7, the heat was so bad. However, I did get the box of all my finds so far this year, and by checking each one off on the database, managed to retrieve the finds taken away by mistake. A waste of my time which should never have happened. Only a week or so ago I mentioned that we had no way of proving we had sent things back to the lab, they can only prove they gave things to us, and they were going to consider what to do. This experience showed clearly that the extensive logging system they have used this year is no use to us, and is liable to cause us more work - and potentially them too.Entered By: Naomi Hamilton |
