| Entry: | XHB, besides from working in the Botany Lab for some hours this morning, drew the NE corner of the trench (Space 446, F.3322, U.15159, 15171) in order to prepare for taking them out and levelling the area tomorrow. PTW drew Space 447. Today I had the idea that wall F.5075, separating Spaces 345 and 447 might be an earlier addition. In both spaces, the path between F.5075 and the buttresses (345: F.5076; 447: F.3319) are extremely narrow.Plus, having only a single wall between two spaces (buildings) would be unusual after all we know about West mound architecture so far. So maybe at some point 345 and 447 were part of one room with maybe four buttresses at ist sides, one of which was later extended to form wall F.5075.
LKH finished U.15178 in Space 448 and continued exposing the plaster on wall F.3324. EMM started excavating room fill in Space 449 (15180). It still contains many finds, probably going together with the cluster unit above (15160). BOD started taking out fill in Space 450 (15177). Here, many artefacts also cluster along F.3326 and 3324 - this cluster is spatially not separated from 15160 in the south, maybe the two clusters together form one deposition event.
Space 450 is still difficult. The dark patches just in front of (west of) F.3326 and 3324 now definitely are mudbrick structures, before removing 15177 this was still blurred and unclear. The mudbricks west of F.3326 are visible in plan now as well as in section (last cm fo fill still left on front of plaster of F.3326 in order to not harm the plaster while pickaxing) and might be some older structure. Strangely, though, the many finds described above seem to be inside this structure (we will have to check that with the coordinates taken from the x-finds). Probably its upper part was disturbed.
Similar mudbrick features appear now in section (again the security-distance section) in front of the northern part of F.3324, in front of (south of) F.3320 and 3321 and east of F.5052. The base limit of those strucutures are already visible, meaning that they were only ca.10cm high in the non-disturbed part under the burial. Again, dark patches, but with blurres outlines, were already visible before removing 15177. Today was not much time to think about these structures and clarify their relation with F.3326, 3324 and so on, something to do for tomorrow.
Space 310 is giving me a hard time. I was able to define outlines of the reddish disturbance (15179) today and started removing it. It cut the southern corner of buttresses F.3301 and 3302 and actually very much of the room fill at this level. I spent quite a while scraping away the red and loose stuff (that is the disturbance) cutting into wall F.2427 from the western part. Some cm thickness of this wall are still in place, but 15179 is cutting into it from west and 15161 from the east. At some points, the wall seem to be totally destroyed, meaning that 15179 and 15165 could actually be the same disturbance. This is hard to decide, though, because the rodent hole, as usual, are blurring everything. I might remove the sad remainders of the upper part of 2427 (it looks terrible) tomorrow in order to find out more about the outlines of the disturbance. I am getting the feeling that this was not a totally random, and maybe a Chalcolithic, disturbance, so I try to find out as much as possible about it. |
