| Entry: | EMM finished documenting the present state of excavation in Space 341 and moved over to the area east of buttress F.5057, where several large potsherds became visible during excavation last year. Some of them belong to what seems to be a pit (15160, 15162), discernible from the compacter surrounding by ist loose concistency. The outlines of the pit are blurred by several rodent holes, but will probably become clearer while excavating. Some of the pot sherds, lying directly in the corner between buttress F.5057 and wall F.5067, do not seem to belong to the loose fill/ pit, though.
LKH had a hard time trying to expose the wall faces in Space 340. We thought they would be plastered, as they are above the level where she started excavating this season. This seems to be only partially the case, though. The face of buttress F.5053/5054 never had much plaster on it, and the newly exposed part looks just like the mudbrick above. It seems, though, as if the already reached the base of wall F.2413, whose plaster ended some cm under the level where excavation started this year. It seems to be sitting on fill of the same kind as LKH has been excavating this season (15144), reddish with a lot of pieces of red painted plaster. The situation with wall F.2428 it rather confusing at the moment. Here as well, the plastered part of the wall seems to end roughly where excavation started this year. 2428 seems to be sitting on a thinner layer of the described reddish fill, but underneath a wall consisting of the well-known blueish dark mudbrick becomes visible. In some parts we already cut some cm into that dark wall, as a plaster line is visible in front of parts of it when the area is watered. Darkish patches are visible in the corners between F.5053/5054 and 2413, and between 2413 and 2428. They might be mudbrick structures, but at the present level still contain some clay and plaster lumps, so maybe we only reached the disturbed upper centimeters of the structures. The dark patch in front of 2428 might even continue futher to the east and maybe form part of the older dark wall.
The original western limit of the very disturbed buttress F.5052 is further to the west than thought beforehand, as now a plaster line is visible in the planum of Space 340 when watered. The upper parts of that buttress has been cut by several pits and rodent holes in the western part and a burial in the southeastern part, thats why we only see ist actual outlines now that we go deeper.
The impressions of the wall situation in Space 340 as visible and discussed today will be checked by LKH tomorrow by scraping parts of the walls and planum, where parts of fill on top of mudbrick structures might still be confusing the situation.
XHB and BOD continued working on clarifying the structures in the Northeastern corner of the trench. BOD is scraping (15158) between buttresses F.5052, 5053/5054 and 5057, coming up with several unexpected patches of mudbrick that will hopefully form meaningful structures when extending the scraping towards south and east. She already found out that butress F.5052 is extending further towards east than known so far. Ist upper part had been cut by burial F.5060, but when coming deeper now, ist actual edge is visible in the planum. XHB started removing the first 10cm of the fill (15159) between the structures already defined in the NE part of the trench and verified the existence of a doorway or gap between F.3320 and F.3321. How F.3320 related to buttress F-5052 just west of it will have to be defined later. XHB is now scraping to define the outlines of F.3321 and 3322 east of F.3320. The area north of the doorway between F.3320 and 3321 and east from 3320 has been named Space 446. The northern part of Space 446 is beyond present trench limits.
JFB finished recording the cut of burial F.3317 and moved over to burial F.3318. SCS removed the last bit of topsoil unit 15138 that was still left around F.3317 and found some more human bones that possibly belong to F.3317. F.3318, a small person (female?) is becoming more and more interesting. She has red mudbrick and one lime stone around her, what, although not forming regular structured, made us think this was a Byzantine burial. There are several pieces of red ochre lying around the skeleton (15155), though, and today two larger pieces of yellow ochre (?) were found next to its two ears. That is not very Byzantine. Her lower body does not seem to be existent. Also, altough the skull is in the right position, the bones of the neck were found slightly north (left) of ist expectable spot, suggesting that the person's body was not connected to the head any more at the moment it was buried. A piece of obsidian found underneath the sternum is also remarkable, but might also be brought into the fill later, as ribs and sternum are compacted and crushed.
PTW and me started scraping eastward from the already visible western limit of buttress F.3302 and the continuation of wall F.2427 in order to define the continuation of F.2427, 5068 and 5076. It turned out that of these structures only some centimeters in the western part are preserved, but their eastern part is cut by some feature filled with a reddish fill (15161). The western limit of this disturbance, cutting F.3032 and 2427 seems nearly linear, therefore we thought it might be possible that 15161 forms a structure. We started removing 15161 by taking it down to the level of walls F.2427 and 5068 in order to see how the disturbance and the walls relate to each other. We did not get very far, though, because several human bones started appearing and we had to work carefully. All those human bones do not form any articulation, cluster or meaningful pattern, though. The human bones and some lime stones and tiles, possibly belonging to 15161 might indicate a post-Chalcolithic and even post-Byzantine disturbance. This impression might be veryfied when defining the outlines of the disturbance tomorrow. |
