| Entry: | Its been too long since I last entered my diary and too much has happened to recap on specifics so I might just ramble on for a bit. I have to say losing some diary entries was demoralising specially as time is so tight. The power problem has been a real set back which needs serious attention for next season, then there aren't always laptops available when the inclination is there but most of all I think we need more people, and more competent people would make life a lot easier. For every student we ought to have a professional, if its our duty here to teach students then they need one to one teaching in the field. On top of everything that piles up on a daily basis this year we've had to do the representatives reports for them too. This has been a real trial writing it in english and then having to get it translated too, thats two people taken off their work for a day every two weeks.
The final 10 day countdown and we're all panicking, well I certainly am. I really need to get those southern walls down this year as they're not going to survive another year. We've been held up in so many areas by piddly complicated deposits, it's taken me well on three weeks to dig the fire installation 82 in space 109. It turned out to be a lot more complicated than originally thought, lots of small deposits, re lining, modifications, raking out events all made more difficult by being riddled by animal burrows. A few lenses of use of the earliest phase of the FI survived in the wall cavity, it was then packed with ashy deposits 2700 and 2701 and the later wall 2398 was constructed up against it, pretty staright forward, however inserted into fill 2701 was a horn core, unfortunately latterly used as an animal burrow, much of it was destroyed, it was found at floor level, to the west of the FI which was on the southern wall, and appeared to have protruded the wall face, I say appeared because the only evidence of this was a shallow ridge which matched the alignment of the horn core exactly, the rigde could only have been created by excavating around something of this shape. This therefore suggests that Mellaart first exposed this. Knowing that this was breaking many of Mellaarts traditions I very carefully noted everything but unfortunately, because of the damaged state this will always be questioned. In section the FI wasn't quite all there and Wendy believes much of it was collapse, however I dug it and apart from the animal damage, it was all there. Today was a real wind up, the oven was finished and I planned to do some major checking sessions on site whilst supervising Ismail digging the rest of the infill in this space, this to release the southern wall, which is a party wall with space 108 level VII. I began to take off what appeared to be levelling deposits which turned out to be about 8cm of floor deposits better preserved in the south west corner against the so called platform. Cutting the floors was a skeleton just about where the horn core was and two shallow scooped FI's 2763 and 2764.
Space 112 has held up wall dismantling because of the burials, 8 to date, plus a couple of pits againstthe east and west walls, the west was filled with plaster fragments, some of which were moulded, this could represent the deposition of dismemembered wall plaster and/or mouldings and these could have origintated from the earlier phase walls at the time when walls 253 and 85 were constructed.
Space 113 is looking really good but I don't think we'll get to dig the floors this season, particularly as I want Craig to take down the southern walls. The souhern wall 75 was rebuilt in level VII and stepped down from east to west, it was built up against the east wall, ie. the east wall of the phase that we're digging now was maintained through to the next phase which was Mellaarts level VII. The reason for this could be: to the south is an open area, possibly suffering more damage than to the east where the wall is protected by a standing building (shrine 14). The west wall appears to be a party wall with the earlier phase of space 112, however because we,re not digging the whole building we don't know whether it's the same building or not. Craig has pretty much come down to floors all over, the ashy deposits around the upstanding FI are floor deposits however the floors associated with that FI have been truncated as have done much of the floors in the rest of the space. The basin type feature in the north west corner has been chopped about probably by a post retreival exersize as we have a post scar at this location. Another post scar survives on the southern wall but there is no retrieval pit. Another FI is located to the west of the upstanding one, this goes through the wall where the remnants of some superstructure survives, either the FI was servicing both rooms or the FI was domed in the small room and used from the northern opening. It was blocked and it appears that the larger FI was then constructed.
Building 2. Work has stopped in space 116 in order to concentrate on the floors of space 117. The southern section in 116 was excavated. This entailed excavating the rest of wall 63 that was excavated last season, a late wall that ran the southern length of space 117, it cut the southern junction of walls 79 and 66 and ran the southern length of space 116. This overlay 116 infill which has now stopped at an arbitrary horizon. The floors in space 117 are under excavation in roughly metre squares. A double bin now survives in the south west corner, the clay balls were excavated, 88 in all with no discernable pattern although the bone did show discreet pockets of particular bone type, there was a mixed botanical assemblage from the upper fills in 1889 very similar to 1868 but the lower fill was mostly charred wood remains, little obsidian and pottery from more than one vessel. Four post retrieval pits were dug against the post scars and just today 2 or 3 FI's or burning events are showing through.
Space 115, the 'midden' deposits are being excavated, now in larger arbitrary layers than last year, that is excavating several deposition events and lenses at a time.Entered By: Shahina Farid |
