| Entry: | EMM continued working in Space 449 (15180), exposing walls F.3324 and 5056 and buttress F.3326. There are some interesting finds clustering south of 3326, including antler and a horn. BOD started to take off floor U.15170 in Space 446 and found out that there are two layers of floor (15170 above 15190) with a very thin layer of brown fill in between them (15191, 0,2-4cm thick). Both layers do not seem to be very even in places, but that might be due to Post-Chalcolithic soil movements.
LKH, JFB and XHB continued working in the northeastern corner of the room (15159, 15184). They found a wall (F.3330) closing Space 448 to north, possibly meeting F.3324 and in line with F.3321. Further scraping in necessary to clearly see the northern limit of F.3330 and ist relationship with 3324 and 3321. XHB drew the section of installation F.3322 and removed it.
Excavation in this area also detected another burial just south of F.3330. JFB will tackle it after finishing the one in Space 310 (see below).
SCS finished scraping walls F.2429, 2428, 3327, 5052, 3320. It is now pretty clear that 3320 cuts into F.5052. The point where those features meet, though, is still blurred. We have to spend some more time of intensive looking at it and maybe see more tomorrow.
LKH scraped the northern and eastern face of buttress F.5076 in order to verify ist existence - we had some doubts in the last days. After scraping, mortar lines became visible, so it definitely is a buttress.
I took out a lot of soil from the Byzantine pit in Space 310 (F.3331, 15179, 15185). The cut (15185) is looking more and more bubble- or bell-shaped. It is very easy to follow it, as the interface with the walls is very clear and that with the original room fill (15176) also quite clear. The pit extends over nearly 2/3 of the southern part of Space 310. The fill contained around 12 fragments of tile so far and several medium sized stones. We stopped using the pick at a level where a massive white stone started to appear in the northern part of the fill. Scraping around it soon made some human bones appear. JFB moved over to Space 310 and discovered parts of a baby (15189) under 3301 (that is, where the corner of 3301 would have been had it not been cut away). 15189 was described as a cluster, as the bones were not in articulated position. Parts of the same skeleton had been found in the fill above the cluster, but not recognised as human infant bones at the time.
Another, adult skeleton appeared at the same level. Ist skull is very close to the cut 15185 between the two buttresses. The huge stone would be sitting on ist chest, some more bones were found east of the stone, under the undercut buttress F.3302.
This verifies that 15185 was cut to contain human bones (maybe even a proper burial = articulated bones). I am not surprised at the, the bell-like shape is to beautiful and neat to be just some rubbish pit. That 15185 cut away most of the southern part of Space 310 is sad, but also lucky because the cut would never be so clear visible without the buttresses. The burial pits extends far more south than the skeletons, it even runs into the southern trench section, so there might still be more to come. It is confusing, though, that these tile fragments, stones and fragments of Chalcolithic and Byzantine sherds are inside the fill 15179. Maybe this cannot be called a burial fill, but was brought in later by some identified activity. |
