| Entry: | Exciting day in Trench 5.
PTW started tackling the fill east of buttress or wall F.5075 in the eastern extension of the trench. He defined the outlines of the ceastwards continuation of wall F.5067 and verified that F.5075 is a wall connected to F.5067 and not a buttress, its eastern limit now nicely defined by a plaster line visible in plan. Therefore, the area he is excavating in does not belong to Space 345, but is seperated from it by wall F.5075 and was given a new space number, Space 447. The eastern limit of the newly exposed buttress F.3319 in this space, visible in plan because coated with plaster, has still to be defined. The fill of the space (15163) contains larger amounts of large potsherds, just as the already excavated (2008-2009) western part did.
At the moment, however, I am not sure about the features defining the western limit of Space 345, that is wall F.5068 and buttress F.5076. Unit 15161, the reddish disturbance of F.2427, 3302 and probably 5058 and 5075 gave me a hard time today. I finished taking it down to the level of 2427 and 5068 and exposing the interface of 15161 and 3302. The border between F.2427, 3302 and 15161 is very clearly visible, as the wall and buttress are of a dark, blueish grey and the disturbance is red. Not at all clear is how the disturbance related to F.5068 and 5076, as they are just the same colour and texture, even when watered. I am tempted to think that the outlines of these two features as defined in 2008 might be blurred by 15161. We will probably check that later in this season.
The disturbed area clearly still continues beyond the eastern and southern limit of the trench extension we are digging this year south of Space 310. I would be very sure that it is a Byzantine or post-Byzantine disturbance, were not the relation with F.3302 very confusing. The interface between buttress and 15161 forms a nearly straight line, judging after what is visible of it, as it is disturbed by tons of rodent holes. Also, 15161 is undercutting 3302, meaning the interface has a concave form and 15161 is running under the mudbrick of the buttress. That seems to be a bit unusual for a pit that was dug to get rid of tiles, stones, pieces of red mud brick and human bones.
The situation will be drawn tomorrow, but then we will not do further work on it for now, because more important features are awaiting excavation.
JFB finished excavating and documenting burial F.3318, which will be taken out tomorrow. After excavating ist fill, the mudbrick of wall F.5058 is already visible, indicating that the burial does not extend further down than the present level. We tried to identify the cut of the burial, which seems to be very narrow and not extending much furthern than the skeleton itself, judging from the very mixed up appearance of the fill around the burial (clay lumps, mortar lumps, tiles, large pot sherds) which seems more like topsoil than like a grave fill. A clear border between grave fill and fill around it was not visible, though. The mudbrick north of it does not seem to belong with F.3318, but was leftover from a burial north of it excavated in 2006 (F.number not to be found because 2206 drawings missing).
JFB moved over to burial F.3316, where she is assisted by SCS and LKH. SCS scraped the area of the burial in order to define the outlines of ist mudbrick lining (15148). Its seems to be in very good condition apart from ist southern half, which seems to be disturbed, the remains of the red brick floating around. Probably this indicates looting. Bones of the skeleton (15150) are already visible. They will continue excavating the fill (15149) tomorrow.
EMM continued working on the pit (15160/15162) which keeps producing very nice large pot sherds and a lot of x-finds.
LKH spent some more time scraping, photographing and drawing the structures in Space 340 (F.5053/5054, 2413, 2428, 5052). We still are not entirely sure about how they relate to each other, but left it for the moment in order to not get stuck here, but rather move to the areas east of the space and by clarifying the structures here maybe come up with new interpretations about the phases and structures in Spaces 340 and 341.
East of the two spaces, in the cut fo burial F.5060, BOD is scraping the surface and levelling the area around it in order to identify structures. Patches of mudbrick are visible already, forming a nice corner around roomfill in the southeastern part of the grave negative, but at the moment no definites outlines of these structures can be defined. She has now started to move towards buttress F.5057 in order to check ist outlines.
XHB is working on defining structures in the northeastern part of the trench (F.3322, 3321) by taking out fill west of them in Space 446. Very unexpectedly, only a few cm down he discovered a plastered floor in that space between F.3320, 3321 and 3322, constructed from the same material as the wall plaster and seemingly in very good condition apart from the usual (bad) rodent damages. He is now working in the area east of F.3322 in order to identify structures here. |
