| Entry: | BOD continued removing lenses of infill in Spaces 450 and 452 (scraping U.15372). While doing so, she exposed further the plaster lump U.15373 which now really looks like a lump rather than a construction and continues further into the fill under bench F.3334. East of this plaster lump, she exposed a cluster of large pot sherds lying roughly flat, two horns and ahsy soil/charcoal (U.15377). This lense seems to represent one depositional event. It might still continue further west under the plaster U.15373. DCO came into the trench and identified the two horns as red deer.
EMM finished documenting the planum she reached in Sp.449 and took out the finds including another bucket-sized amount of clay balls. She started another unit of room fill (U.15370).
XHB just will not stop finding floors in Space 446. In addition to the orange floor U.15341 that was already discovered last year and the yellow floor U.15371 he found yesterday, to the north of U.15371 there now is a flatish grey deposit that is very compact and might represent another floor. This new floor is nearly exactly on one level with 15371; the two of them might actually be one floor made up from different materials. It is ashame that most of Sp.446 is outside present trench limits and we might not fully understand the sequence and nature of this space; on the other hand, the trench border generates a nice section of the room fill and floors that might later be useful.
DKK made great progress in Sp.340, removing a lot of fill (U. 15366, U.15374), which still does not contain many finds but increasingly many. Wall F.2413/5055 and buttress F.5052 are still giving us a hard time, like last year, because their brick contains rather large chunks of material one would not expect in brick (plaster, small lumps of clay of different colours, charcoal spots, small sherds). The fill surrounding DKKs units still seems to be wall rather than infill, though.
PTW finished taking out the cluster U.15365 and plaster structure U.18349 in Sp.453. The cluster contains large articulated animal spines, horns, sherds, a lump of pale yellow plaster and a flat compact piece of orange plaster on top of yellow plaster. The whole cluster and soil around it was plastered over with U.18349 wich is sloping down considerably, as if making a little protecting roof over the cluster. The whole arrangement looks certainly intentional, but what the intention might have been is unclear.
RHB excavated another cluster of pot sherds and stone artefacts in Sp.345 (15174) and spent some time cleaning the plaster of wall F.5075 which seems to have been washed down into the room at this level.
In the trench extension, we spent the day clarifying archaeological contexts. CMB levelled and brushed the planum created by removing the top soil layer U.15357. After cleaning, we were able to see the southeast corner of Space 342 (corner between the eastern wall F.2424 and the new southern wall of the building F.3341) fairly clear. Over most of the western part of the new southern wall F.3341 there still seems to be a thick package of later and disturbed fill, though, which CMB will remove tomorrow in order to see the outlines of the space. CMB also removed a small pit (U.15375, 15376) filled with ashy soil on the southern room fill section in/over Sp.342, whose northern part must already have been removed in 2006/2007.
After looking at the western section of Sp.342 (in its limits as excavated so far) again, it seems that the supposed bench F.3311 might actually not exist, but instead the dark mudbrick construction(s) visible in this corner (NW) might represent the outer walls of the space. The wall situation here is obscured by a large pit filled with reddish burnt brick (thus post-Chalcolithic) which cuts into all constructional features (F.2426, F.5051 and possibly F.3311) and seems to have a very flat bottom.That the construction labelled F.3311 had a flat upper surface probably led to the interpretation of it as a bench, but really ist upper parts were cut by the red pit. At the moment, we only see one massive construction of nearly black brick in this corner, which is so far not separatable into a wall F.5051 and a bench F.3311. We might see this distinction later (the area is cut be several pits) or alternatively there is not bench, but wall F.5051 is just thicker in this part. In any case, the western section might cut the corner of the northern wall of F.5051 and the western wall of Space 342. We will see this when removing more disturbed fill in the western trench extension.
DLG is very busy with the total station, but still gets a lot done in the trench extension over the western part of Sp.343. After he finished the arbitrary layer of top soil / disturbed fill U.15358 yesterday, he brushed the planum today. We identified several pits with the help of the western sections through the fills of of Sp.342 and Sp.343. One massive layer of fill, maybe pit, overlies/cuts the disturbed wall F.2426 and has a sloping base. We were not able to follow this fill further to the north. Of all the disturbances in this area, burial F.3342 seems to be the youngest, therefore we decided to take this out first. This burial must have been visible since 2006 or 2007 and remained as a block over the supposed northwest corner of Sp.343, but apparently was not attributed a feature number to far. DLG started taking down the fill still remaining on the burial (U.15378) in order to expose the cut and cist construction. While doing so, he found a wall consisting of the same reddish brick and reddish lumpy mortar that was used for all constructions in Sp.343. This wall, which is not yet fully visible, is not only ca.1.2m above the other walls of the space, but also might have a completely different orientation (NW-SE). It might sit over the grave pit of F.3342 or the burial only cut through ist souther part. DLG will clarify this strange wall further tomorrow.
HLS finished removing layer U.15355, which, as we now know, contained fill of pit F.3331 together with disturbed fill outside the pit. She stopped at a level where the border between pit F.3331 and the fill to the south was clearly visible. The fill to the south has not yet been identified as pit or deposit, but must be post-Chalcolithic as it contains tile and stone. This fill was very colourful and had fine layers of reddish clayey material and charcoal. After reaching the level where the interface between those to units was visible, HLS started to clean the planum. During scraping, the fill got redder and redder, turning out to be the bricks of a burial aligned NE-SW which is only partially inside the present trench border. According to the pace of the excavations, we might or might not dig this burial this year, but it would be really nice to excavate it as it seems undisturbed so far. Pit F.3331 and this new burial (F.3343) do not seem to cut each other, but we have to do more scraping to confirm this. The bricks are extremely compact, so cleaning is hard. |
