| Entry: | This is my first diary entry for the Catal 2010 season. I was in Catal in 2007 and 2008, so it feels a little bit like coming back home. However, there is an important change this year: I moved from the West Mound to the East Mound.
Last year, during my Masters at the UCL, I developed an interest for the transition from Pre-Pottery Neolithic to Pottery Neolithic in the Northern Levant. Catal East covers this period chronologically, so it makes sense for me to be working there. Moreover, since I have never worked with a professional unit, I wanted to see the kinds of techniques and methods of recording used on the East Mound. I would like to thank Shahina for giving me the opportunity to be here.
I was assigned to Roddy’s team in the South Shelter. We excavate a typical Mellaart ‘Level VI’ burnt building. This building level has already yielded several burnt rectangular houses built of mudbrick with plastered walls and wooden buttresses, some of which have produced wall paintings and bucrania in the old time of Mellaart. We hope to make similar discoveries this year. Another important issue is the possible identification of an upper storey in some of these houses, which could change our vision of Catalhoyuk radically.
Building 80 is well preserved. Walls are standing up to about 2.2 m high. They have the traditional buttresses, as well as deep horizontal grooves and niches in the plaster. The upper groove may have been used as a slot for the wooden floor of an upper storey. There is a well-preserved domed oven in the South part of the central room, as well as a small side chamber, which we will try to excavate this year. In the South wall of the central room, there is a deep ridge running diagonally, which was used to set a wooden ladder leading to an upper storey or the roof. We have not quite reached the floor of the building yet. We still have to go through about 50 cm of deposit.
The building has burnt for unknown reasons. As a consequence, the roof and the upper part of some of the walls collapsed into the building. Large carbonised beams are most conspicuous. The building was then sealed in Neolithic times and filled with earth, which explains its good preservation.
Alisa, Chris, Roddy and I are currently taking down unit [18928], which corresponds to this dump Neolithic deposit. We have found many animal bones, shells, as well as a few obsidian finds, including a dagger or spearhead (x.3). Work goes rather quickly with mattocks and handpicks. Tracing the plaster on the walls is a little more time-consuming and involves a careful cleaning with a leaf-trowel. So far, three horizontal grooves in the plaster have been identified, but their function remains mysterious.
I really like working on building 80, which has an amazing architecture, and we form a small, yet I feel efficient team, thanks in part to Roddy, who is a very nice trench supervisor! |
