| Entry: | JFB drew burial F.3347 today and took out the bones. It turns out that some of the skeleton is outside trench borders, we are currently discussing what to do about that. She was assisted by a micromorphology specialist taking samples to identify rest of soft tissue. The upper body of this person was disturbed in parts. She then moved over to burial F.3342 and started taking out ist fill.
DLG finished emptying pit 15396/15397, which turned out to be difficult in parts because the pit and ist border were also used by little rodents to built a underground castle. The pit destroyed the northwestern part of wall F.2426 and the southern part of wall F.3344, so the cut was recognisable in the parts where is cut the walls. He will continue to take out the bit of probably disturbed room fill of Sp.343 left directly east of F.3344 in this level, to go further down to hopefully undisturbed fill.
JHB did some more small-scale excavation in Space 342 (U.15359), exposing the plastered face of buttress F.5062, which is mostly well-preserved and firm, but destroyed by another rodent palace in the northern part. He cleaned more around F.3346 to see ist outlines, which are actually getting less clear with every hour of excavation. In the corner of F.3346 and F.5051, there is some truncated brick and plaster, along with larger pieces of heavily burnt plaster. We cleaned to area and sprayed it to discover a possible pit, but saw none. I start to believe that the events truncating F.3346 were not post-Chalcolithic, but maybe Chalcolithic, intentional and in connection with burning. If these destruction events were intentional, they were small scale and controlled. When did they happen? The pits visible in section that destroyed the upper parts of F.3346, F.5051(west) and maybe the northern part of buttress F.5062 look so very nice and neat, both their cuts and their fill, which is mostly homgeneous reddish mud. Might these pits be Chalcolithic, dug down after the filling of the room, to destroy the wall features and maybe features we do not seem any more? Or were they destroyed before the room was filled in?
CMB finished U.15879 today, brushed and sprayed the planum. Apart from burial F.3347, there are at least to more disturbances in the area. There seems to be a massive pit or several pits from about the centre of the trench extension until the western section and further, recognisable by large stones and tile and by the fact that wall F.3341 and F.3345 are cut in this area. The tiles and stones in this pit seem to form a circle - burial?? Another pit cut F.3345 further south. The section of room fill in Space 342, visible from the northern half where JHB is excavating, looks indisturbed, though. We now have to get out the disturbances, find the walls and keep the undisturbed room fill. The pit borders were not visible today, though. We have to think about what to do, maybe we start excavating the pits from the centres (where the stones ect are found) and work our way outwards towards undisturbed Chalcolithic fill.
HLS took down the southern half of pit F.3331 down to the level of the northern half, excavated in 2010. After cleaning and a photo, she scraped under the undercut butress F.3302 to find the rest of the human bone cluster U.15199 which we were not able to finish last year. There were only a few bones left. After this cluster was out, she got out the large pick and started taking down the pit by 10cm (U.16928). The bottom of the pit probably is close, as it is probable that the human bones were deposited rather at the bottom of the pit. Also, the pit undercuts the surrounding fill and buttresses by quite a bit and the pit might have collapsed during cutting when this undercutting goes out any further.
BOD continues to find structures in Space 462, which seems to become more different every hour. Apart from the three buttresses we saw in plan yesterday (F.3337, F.3338, F.3339), there might be a structure abutting and surrounding F.3338 and similar constructions along the corner of walls F.3304 and 3305. All these possible features appear as darker, compacter spots with less finds in them in plan. After staring at them for several time, after they change colour during day, though, the situation becomes less clear. The possible constructions along F.3304 and F.3305 might just be an imagination caused by the fact that the area in the shade of these walls does not dry out as fast and the rest of the planum. At the moment, BOD removes everything that is securely fill (U.15394, ca. 15cm deep) and tries to approach the possible features from the sides. To complete the confused, the lower part of wall F.3304 as visible noe does not look brickish at all any more, but rather like the fill BOD is excavating inside the room, having the same inclusions (such as the crumbly reddish mortar used for the upper walls in that Space, F.2426, 2425/5050 and F.5074. Is F.3304 already sitting on fill? This does not seem to be the case with F.3305, though.
RHB finished room fill U.15174 in Space 345, cleaned the room, photographed it and started to draw it. The room fill is very colourful (plae yellow clay/marl, orange clay, spots of charcoal and lime, greyish silt) and many finds in it, some in clusters.
DKK documented cluster U.15389 and took out most of it. In the passage of Sp.450 and 340, the cluster goes deeper under present level, but in the rest of the room, the fill now consists of greyish silft with some scattered clay balls, sherds, a fragment of red painted plaster and two of greyish brick (arbitrary layer U.15386).
EMM removed the upper part of the layer with many burnt plaster fragments (U.15380) and scraped the rest of the room to the same level (U.15370). The plaster layer still is not finished, but instead on this level seems to contain even more plaster fragments. The rest of the room has "normal fill ", greyish silt with clumps of clay/marl of different colour and clay balls. She then brushed it, we took a photo and EMM started to draw.
XHB is spending happy time with his floors in Space 446. Today while cleaning and drawing he saw yet another floor (U.16927). He made a detailed drawing of the area.
ER and Marek from the TP team removed the bench-like F.3334 in Space 450/452 today, leaving only the northermost bit of the S-shape. The base of the feature is stepped twice, consisting of four layers of mubrick in the SW, of three in the SE and of two in the NE. This supports the interpretation of the feature having been built on room fill. Apparently, the area was flattened before that happened, but in steps, for some reason. All of the feature was taken out brick layer by layer and all of it sent to flotation. The plaster of buttress F.5052 appeared behind the bench, as expected. It seems disturbed in some places and might be multi-layered; we have to clean it a bit more. |
