| Entry: | 25th August. It's still there - but dwindling. I thought I'd sorted out what to do, but F279 is full of surprises. I started by taking off a small but high, moulded bricky deposit, 3657? - at the west. It came down onto a midden-type deposit with micro-fauna in it! Now, this threw me, I admit. Either the micro-fauna is in the feature, or else it is directly on top of micro-fauna although the brick-like grey and orange layers the micro-fauna are associated with seem to be part of the feature. Having taken out 3657, it begins to look as though this was the end of a horn-shaped object wrapped up in 3300, which seems to lip up under 3634. It needs a very careful clean because it is so fragile. I took out some fairly substantial parts, - the white marly stuff underlying 3634, and a grey brick-like deposit on the southern edge towards the east (3664?), but things are still convoluted. However, 3664 cleaned down onto a very thin white plaster which seems to be 3300 coming through on the bottom at last. Unfortunately it is practically impossible to separate the two. On the northern edge there is a thin skim of orange-brown between the grey chaffy 'brick' and the white plaster, similar to what Mark has in his bins. I decided to be much more rough and take things off in arbitrary layers more often - I have done a few before - but it wasn't entirely helpful. If it doesn't clarify what is going on, it is likely to make it even more complicated. Anyway, I spent four sessions up there - went back 5-7pm to try to get more done - and I noticed just before I finished that there is some micro-fauna in another grey brick-like deposit beneath the lowest plaster layer visible in the southern section cut last year. So perhaps the micro-fauna really is in the feature deposits, and not just in the room fill. That would be interesting.
Did get a little lab work done, but not much. It's a long day, doing four sessions on site, but time shoots by so fast.Entered By: Naomi Hamilton |
