| Entry: | Diary for 18.8.
I started excavating the third spit of room fill in Sp 310 today (18326). Soil still very heterogeneous. Fill continues to contain huge amounts of pot sherds and animal bones. I expected that the cluster defined in the horizon above (18319, 18320, 18321, 18323) would continue. Today I decided to remove all sherds and bones unless they were very large, sticking in the planum or densely concentrated. The pattern that was visible afterwards did not, however, show any concentrations of finds that were similar to the position of the four clusters. I therefore closed the four cluster units.
Up to now it does the situation after removing 18326 does look like room fill with several small concentrations of large sherds sticking in it. The finds are not, however, as dense as in the horizon above. I therefore will most probably not define any new clusters.
I am not fully satisfied with the way I try to document the situation that I see in Space 310. If one would see it in a 3-dimensional way there would be clouds of artefacts in the fill which are less dense in some points - I do not really believe in horizons or non-arbitrary clusters any more. All drawing and photos, however, are always somehow 2-dimensional and the need to remove more than 5cm at a time in order to get some work done does not allow for documenting thin slices of the fill and finds.
While excavating, a pale yellow plaster line showed some 5-3cm in front of the Western limit of wall 2427. The line runs roughly parallel to this wall, but it closer to it in the South than in the North. I think that this is the upper and Western limit of a new wall that is under 2724. To me it looks as if there was a layer of heterogeneous fill in between then two walls, PFB and ER however rather think that this is mudbrick as well and the two walls sit directly on top of each other. It seems clear by now, though, that I reached a younger phase of construction in which Space 310 had different outlines than it had later when limited by 2408, 2427, 5058 and the buttresses (?) 3301 and 3302. The fill, however, is just the same since at least 60-70cm above the current level in the Space. What this means it not yet clear to me. |
