| Entry: | We are moving pleasingly fast in the trench extension of Trench 5. The only limiting factor to the speed of the excavation is the soil sieving, so we are currently working on three sieves.
JHB and RHB finished U.15351 over Space 454. They went down to the level on which the tops of the walls (F.2427, F.5058) are visible in the section, the walls are not yet appearing in plan. The soil over the southern part of Space 454 looks very disturbed, as expected, containing tile and stones and other Byzantine artfacts. The continuation of pit F.3331 is not yet visible, though. We therefore decided to take down another arbitrary layer of 7-10cm to reach the tops of these features U.15352).
EMM, CMB, HLS and JFB continued working on U.153450, removing large amounts of soil and further kept up by bone clusters appearing. Most of them turned out to be animal bones, but some stray human bones were found. Also, more bones of F.3340 became visible proving that this is a burial rather than a cluster of redeposited human bones and that we probably have the whole body including the skull in the trench extension. Excavating F.3340 is difficult as the person seems to have been buried in a very unhealthy position with its back much higher up than the head and feet. As we do not want to make a massive hole, we will continue to excavate and document it in layers. The skeleton nevertheless seems to have been disturbed in parts.
Besides of this, U.15350 is mixed up soil, probably having been moved and deposited several times on post-Neolithic eras.
Unlike U.15350 which seems to be still high above any prehistoric architecture, U.15349, excavated by DLG, DKK and PTW, contains patches of seemingly floating prehistoric architectural materials such as the reddish, compact and crumbly red mortar used for e.g. F.2425/5050, patches of plaster and of something looking like the dark grey-blueish mud used for e.g. F.2424. Some of the plaster and mud patches must be structures, as they form lines. We spent some time scratchin on some of these spots, but could not follow the lines any further, so we will just take the whole unit down to one level and then have a closer look. It already is apparent that the structures would not represent the walls and buttresses we expect if Spaces 342 and 343 are symmetric rectangular buildings with four internat buttresses similar to Building 98. Either these buildings have some unexpected fancy new ground plan or we are currently looking on another building phase on top of Space 343 and 342. Both would be really exciting. |
