| Entry: | Today I finally discovered the surface (U 16947) in space 449. I tried in the morning to level the rest of the arbitrary unit 16936 from yesterday in front of F 3326, when there turned up a very loose and crumbly lens of burned soil, mixed with medium sized and larger sized chunks of wall plaster (deposited in all different angles). When touching with the trowel, this lens could be removed without effort, because it was lying on a firm and very levelled surface. This surface has a yellowish, patchy colour when freshly excavated, it turns into a brownish grey when being left exposed some time. It contains some inclusions of charcoal (but only small pieces).The surface can be easily found in front of F 3326, and is extending into the centre of space 449. Unfortunately it is disturbed in the corner ofbuttress F 3326 (connecting to space 450) by an animal burrow, and this disturbance is extending into the space. This meepmeep ate a large part of my beautiful surface, leaving only some boring sherds of bigger pottery in place, and if I`ll ever meet it I will probably forget that I`m a vegetarian. To get to the point, at the moment I lost trace of the surface in western direction and whether it maybe connects somehow to the beautiful layer of x-finds of U 16936 in front of F 5057. Pottery sherds and some wall plaster chunks are lying flat on the surface. I separated the finds and soil tally of the roomfill that is directly above the surface from the arbitrary roomfill U 16936, this last layer of roomfill above the surface has unit number 16942. U 16942 contains all finds from the first layer of roomfill above surface (U 16947) that are not (!) lying directly on the surface. This separation might appear artificial, but it might be handy to see differences between the spectrum of artefacts directly associated with the floor, the first “phase” of the fill, and later fill. And as I have dug this room now for quite a long time, I am very convinced that such a ( even if artificially constructed) separation makes perfectly sense, because I really have the impression that the spectrum of finds changed when I look back at the contents of space 449 when I started digging last year. The first layer of roomfill (U15160) contained a lot of worked bone and pottery clusters, changing into a clayballcaché (15343) at the end of last year`s season, mixed with a lot of larger ground stone and articulated bone (U 15180), then the outskirts of the clayballcaché, stratigraphically at the same level as a deposition event of building material (U 15380) (continuing also in U 16936), mixed only with very few other finds ( in comparison to the spectrum of finds I was used to last year).Now we are facing a fill that consist mainly of larger pottery sherds, fragments of ground stone, very few clayballs, some obsidian, but no special forms or tools, antler, few and very fragmented bone and, especially in the centre of the space and in front of F 3326, a lens of building material directly superimposing the surface. In front of F 3324 the surface seems to be a little higher up than in front of F 3326, also there the surface is disturbed by a lot of animal burrows. In the SE-corner of the space there aren`t any finds showing up, neither on the surface nor in the first infill unit 16942.But as it is sloping a little upwards, it is possible that I´m not yet on the right level and the surface is superimposed by a similar looking clay lens.Maybe the difference of fill and surface becomes clearer tomorrow morning. Also the surface-situation in front of F 3333 is not yet clear. But there seems to be a mudbrick lying in the space, similar to BODs mudbrick in space 450 and DKKsmudbrick in space 340. |
