| Entry: | belated entry for 12/08/2010
today was whiled away in drawing space 450, on which I've been working for the last few days. I have looked on this area for so long now, I can draw its light black on dark gray lines with my eyes closed, but I still can't tell if they form thick walls, old walls, or just nothing. This is actually my second drawing of it, first one (10/519) was rather optimistic, the second try (10/523) is rather on the pessimistic site. Hopefully we'll be able to tell once the next unit (15177) is out
14/08/10
An exciting and confusing day in space 450. Went down into U.15177 about 20cm, bringing the inter-buttress area to the level of adjacent space 340. Starting from the NW corner, at first the excavation was easy and uneventful. Moderately soft roomfill with large chunks of plaster and mortar lumps. Ismail went through it with a pick axe up to a point where we started picking up X find after X find. We continued eastwards with extra care. Ismail was great at spotting the finds as they kept coming up – a total of 20 X finds for the day. They were all concentrated in a strip going S-N just in front of the plaster line of buttress F.3326. This coincides with the dark patch I had noted in the higher levels (U.15158). After clearing up and levelling, the outlines of two mudbricks emerged in the ground, underlying the plaster outlines of buttress F.3326. I cut the profile vertical just 3cm before the plaster line, and more mudbricks appeared at a little depth in the section to the North of the buttress. (By contrast, the sections in front of the other buttresses looked like roomfill.) Further to the north the bricks stop, and start again after 30-40cm, forming something like a niche or passage.
In it we found fairly intact bowl (cluster X18), upside down, surrounded by a bit of creamy yellow powder, which may have been inside the pot -given its broken side faces the ground just by the powdery material. This bowl seems to lie inside the niche, surrounded by roomfill. Still, a number of objects of respectable size came literally from the mudbrick, and it's hard to tell whether they were lieing on the mudbrick or squished between mudbrick and roomfill. It would be useful to plot the levels of the finds to see if they come from the same height. However that may not necessarily indicate they were lieing on the mudbricks, because we removed some of it with the pick axe.
The other cluster which deserves attention is X11, to the south of the mudbricks. It consists of a vessel base upside down, containing some yellowish deposits that had stuck to the bottom of the vessel (sample S3), one complete and one fragment of a clay ball (X7, 14) sandwiched between the base and more sherds from the vessel. I have not lifted the lower fragments yet, but it seems that the vessel contained the clay balls and some food (?) deposit. There were a few more sherds around it, including one burnt sherd. Given the situation of this pot, the potstand (X10), in proximity to cluster of vessels and animal bones (U.15160), and the potstand in space 446 (X1 of U.15159), in my opinion we are looking at cooking deposits. Analysis of S3 should be very interesting in that relation. If it is food, it may reinforce the evidence that clay balls were used for cooking or warming, and even suggest what kinds of foods were used with them.
At the moment I am inclined to think that the mudbricks may be contemporaneous with the buttress, with all the finds lieing on them – the concentration of small objects was so high in such a small area. Also, I have been wondering – are we sure those buttresses are buttresses? We keep using them as shelves for our clipboards and tools (against the good archaeological practice) – given the top of buttress 3326 was erased by the Byzantine burial, we cannot know if it was actually a mudbrick-made table or shelf, with more mudbricks to put things on? Probably wrong, but who knows. Those mudbricks don't make a lot of sense anyway, so who knows. It might be useful to spend tomorrow looking for the relationship between the mudbricks and the plaster of the buttress, and also the relations between space 450, 446 and cluster 15160, now continuing into U.15180. The latter may be more worthwile as space 446 is designated 'proven floor' area and doesn't seem to be on the same level of the house or phase. Also I should probably be more meticulous about the X finds levels, to make it easier to answer my own questions. |
