| Entry: | Being here is only fun if you excavate (or if a specialist work on your finds), but I find it hard to wrtite our article here. This is, although the co-authors then cannot communicate directly, much better done via the internet back home where you have a comfy chair and the internet and a library and all the information you need. Trying to solve what is going on in the NE corner of building 98 and space 446 is also more important, as this cannot be solved back home, and this is the only problematic architectural structure issue left in trench 5.
In its W part, building 98 has single walls, but to the E of the buttresses 5052 and 5057, the N and S walls do not continue on the same northing: 3333 in the S seems one mudbrick row to far S, and the same is true of 3335 and 3321 with the gap that is a candidate for a door.
Door problem: PFB says quite rightly that doors are structurally risky things and thus are kept as narrow as possible, and space 452, which then would be a passage-space, is not so full with finds as 449 and 340. Can we use the density of finds to locate the entrance, also when there is none at ground level, so the place where the trapdoor from the first floor was? In the center between the butrresses or rather on a wall like on the East Mound for safer climbing on a ladder? On the other hand, my shoulders just fit through this gap. If I would carry about 80kg of clayballs into building 98, I'd have to raise my elbows to carry a basket or bag and would not fit through anymore. And there is now a plaster line on the level XHB has come down to. Is the door just a disturbance?
To make my thoughts into this problem, I decided today not to leave the bench 3334 standing W-E along walll 3335, but to take it away entirely, as only the fill below 3334 (16929) can tell us more about the stratigraphic relationships in that corner. This work will be continued tomorrow. |
