| Entry: | This year's season was very efficient due to an excellent team, and as TEB has taken over the technical part of the diary I had done during the previous three years, this day of recovery from a feaverish cold is the time to summarize my view of our results.
As we went deeper in some of the spaces we had defined last year, we came down to surfaces as we had hoped, and also got a first glimpse into earlier phases below the architecture that is currently visible. As the walls so far seem to perfectly respect each other without overlying or cutting each other, we had to either assume that they are contemporaneous, which is no longer very likely given the different base levels of some walls we have already traced down, or that the spaces were not changed in their extent similar to the ancestral household model that applies to both the Neolithic East Mound and EC Can Hasan I III --> 2B --> 2A. That the roomfill of some spaces (342, 310) contains lots of material hinting to ceramic production, such as red and bright white clay lumps, grinding stones still bearing traces of red pigment as well as unpainted and even painted unfired ceramics, connects Trench 5 not only with Jonathans and Catrionas results in Trench 1, but also with Mellaarts EC Hacilar.
In spaces 340 and 341 SO and EMM stopped working after we found that a big disturbance 18324 sits in the center of the building and is in itself again cut by a late grave which continues under the E edge of the trench. Next year, we are going to tackle this and other late graves yet to come with JFB's anthropological help. And then we will know about the E half of that building, and what is going on in "Ramazan's kitchen" in the NE corner of the trench.
In space 345, further excavation by SO and EMM then clarified the definition of the space. Initially, I had assumed that a pit 18340 had truncated the S wall 5075 and that the charred wooden branch 18338 is part of the pit and thus a late thing. After coming down onto a hardish earth surface marked by a thinnish coat of phytoliths and ashy spots (18347) with 18337, I realized that neither 5075 nor 5076 are walls, but buttresses. In the center of that building, which still is hidden under the S and E sections, there is a late grave, and 18340 was part EC roomfill, part the backfill between the grave cut and the orange mudbrick chamber. After inspection of the S section, there is a chance that 18338 is indeed EC and thus a part of a collapsed constructional element (ceiling, roof?).
Space 310 remains a bit of a puzzle, as the zone under the end of the plaster on walls 2427, 2408 and 5058 as well as the S butresses looked very much like a wall at the end of last season and at the beginning of this one. The fill continued to be full of potsherds and clusters sticking out from it, so JMR went deeper, as the mudbrick wall continued. As some potsherds seemed to underlie wall 2428, we were confused if we had undercut the wall, and then plaster reappeared. Is this a niche in the wall? Or is it indeed a fill layer in between two phases of the walls that only pretends to be a wall? Either way, with unit 18343 (which contained the small cattle head from unbaked clay) we stopped, as we are already in an earlier phase. Like last year, the plaster lips out a bit but ca. 10cm away from the wall it appears to be broken away. I suspect that this is the result of eroded plaster that accumulates on a surface. People walking close to the wall then destroy this lip so it looks as if broken away - a phenomenon observable at the outside of the experimental house. PFB, however, interprets the lip as some sort of installation or even the negative of a vertical wooden beam. I am very curious to finally extend the trench next year towards the S, so we find out if those buttresses are actually buttresses or a doorway, and see what is going on with this space that we seem not to able to understand without seeing the whole building.
In space 342, removing roomfill with spit units 18309 and 18311, SRW came upon a change in consistency (18328) that might have been either a trodden earth surface or an episode of infill. The latter is more likely, as IF found sherd fittings between 18309 and 18328 and the S section reveals no plain surface but rather lenses. DCO finds the deposit very interesting, because it contained well-preserved animal bones with the epi- and diaphyses of juvenile longbones still found in articulation, which is sign of rapid deposition. As we could not detect traces of a grave cut or fill around the skeletons 16835 (which abutted wall 5051 and sat on 3303, which can either be a bench as in Can Hasan or - less likely - another, broader phase of the wall 5051) and 18333 (which abutted buttress 5061 and sat on surface 18341 underlying 18328), the neonates must be also part of that rapid deposition. 18341 was marked by obsidians flatly coming off from a surface as well as lots of small finds. The ashy spot 18345 was surrounded by an assemblage of potstands, which makes an interpretation of a shortlived fireplace on that surface likely. 18341 and underlying surface 18346 are abutting the bench 3303 which was first uncovered with 18309, but their relationships with the butresses 5061 and 5063 still remains unclear, as it is hard to decide if the lighter grey hard stuff under the dark grey mudbricks of the buttresses is fill or another type of mudbrick. Also a ligh grey mudbrick sits in fromt of the bench, and next year we have to find out about the relative chronology of walls 5051 and 2424 which are abutted by 3303 (plaster sticking on 5051 continues behind 3303) and the butresses.
Also the removal of walls 5074, 5050=2425 and 2426 as a younger phase of space 343 will give us a hint how deep 5051 will reach. After the removal of 18301 which was still very disturbed, TEB and PTW dug down using 18314, a suprisingly empty earthy fill that might point to a deliberate infill, until the outlines of three buttresses became visible first in the W section and then also in the planum. As 5074 has two protrusions severely cut by later pits, we can interpret them as the last remains of a buttress. It is overlying the buttress 3309 at a slight offset towards the E, so we can assume that the "lower" buttresses 3309,3308 and 3307 and the lower walls 3304, 3305 and 3306 are not a more compact lift in one and the same wall, but indeed a later phase. The undulating base level of wall 5050=2425 and the fact that the base level of 5074 is lower than that of 5050=2425 suggests that the lower phase was cut back in order to provide a stable foundation for the upper phase. It is also no surprise that the base level of the late grave 2416 coincides with the base level of the younger phase - the lazy late romans just stopped when it got more compact and harder to dig.
The more *we* dig, however, the easier it gets. Hope to have everybody back next year to first thing whack out some phases ;-) and thanks for all the work! |
