| Entry: | Nice progress in the trench on Thursday and today, although several areas start to become more complicated than they seemed to be. As usual!
HLS continued to expose the plaster feature U.16932. We are not that sure any more that is is a floor, although it is on the same level as the plaster layer coming out from wall F.2427. On several sides, though, the plaster layer U.16932 seems to have clear endings and is not disturbed, this is most obvious in the north. It furthermore is really bumpy and seems to have a least two layers. Today we noticed it is lipping up against fill that looks like original Chalcolithic room fill, but certainly not like a construction feature. Tomorrow hopefully we will have exposed all parts of this feature which are not still under burial F.3343 and the rest of pit F.3331 and will be able to get an idea what this plaster feature was constructed for. At the moment, I would go for some kind of installlation rather than for floor. On Thursday I started to think that 16932 might be related to the pit (F.3331) rather than Space 454 and might therefore be post-Chalcolithic. This is becoming less probable, though, as it is on the same level as the floor rest on Space 310/453 (U.18349) and the "threshhold" between buttresses F.3301 and F.3302.
JFB started working on burial F.3343, just above the head of HLS to the north. The burial was disturbed and some disturbed fill and red brick with some human bones scattered over the mudbrick construction (disturbed fill: U.16953, brick: U.16954). Both the brick and surrounding soil are very compact. While scraping, she also found some brick and plaster that looks like Chalcolithic architecture disturbed by the burial. Together with the features exposed by the workmen and me during removing the multiple disturbances in the southern trench extension (U.16934) and the continuation of wall F.2427 exposed by HSL in the bottom of her pit, the picture seems to become clearer. Both F.2427 and F.5058 do not seem to run linear, but move further to the west around Space 454. The walls surrounding Space 454 might even be different construction features that F.2427 and F.5058, might be new walls abutting those. This is not clear yet, though. A badly disturbed construction feature found on Thursday north of burial F.3343 (F.3351) today after further scratching and removing of disturbed fill around it looked like a buttress, abutting wall F.5058 south of buttress F.3301. A large patch of brick found by JFB east of burial F.3343 might be the twin buttress, but this is not at all clear. This would make the building containing Sp.310 and 454 into a long a narrow building with several buttresses on its sides, which is not at all improbable. I had nearly given up on finding the southern wall of this building in order to “close” it this year, when JFB saw another plaster line south of her burial, which might belong to a very disturbed southern wall. All of this is very tentative at the moment, though. Wall F.3345, belonging to a building south of Sp.342, is less disturbed and nicely visible in plan; no sign yet of an eastern wall of this building, though, forming a corner with F.3345, running NS west of F.5058. The northernmost part of such a wall should just be within trench borders, but probably is too disturbed to be seen. The reason to extend the trench towards southwest, though, F.3341, the southern wall of Space 342, is still shy and hiding away. Its southern edge, where it is separated from 3345 by a gap, is quite clear, but the northern part not there any more, and it has gaps in between. Strangely, the disturbing fill is extremely compact and no clear indications of late material in it can be found. Also, in the adjoining room fill, no disturbances are obvious. Could it be possible that the northern face of F.3341, facing into Space 342, was dismantled during the Chalcolithic before or during the infilling process of Space 342?
CMB took out the fill of the late pit in the northwest corner of Space 342 (cut: 16943, fill: 16937). What became visible afterwards as most astonishing. The pit was placed very intelligently in a spot where it cut away parts of four to five walls and evidence of how these relate to each other. The pit cut into the westernmost part of F.2426 and possibly in its corner with F.3344. It cut away the western part of F.5051, its corner with F.3346 and the upper part of F.3346. This makes in very difficult to decide what kind of feature 3345 actually is. The brick and mortar visible in the profile west of Space 342 since the beginning of the season turned out to be part of it, as expected. The feature therefore originally was much higher. Was it the western wall of Space 342? This is rather improbable, as no trace of it can be found to the south and also it would meet buttress F.5062 in a way that this buttress would be nearly completely incorporated into F.3346. Unless the outer wall was not linear…
Was it a buttress in a weird place? In this case, one might suspect that the building containing Space 342 continued further west outside of the trench, but is not preserved here.
F.3346 becomes more complicated when considering that it and F.5051 cut or were cut by two other walls. The interface between F.2426 or the corner of F.2426 and F.3344 and F.5051 as visible in the pit cut looks so irregular that one must have been placed against the cut remainders of the other. The same is true for the relation of F.3346 with a very strange wall abutting it from the west, visible in the pit cut. This wall (F.3349) has the same lumpy red mortar as the walls surrounding Space 343 (F.2426, F.2425/5050, F.5074), but yellowish brick. Even stranger, directly west of F.3349, there is yet another wall with greyish clay and pale yellow/white mortar (F.3350) visible in the trench profile and pit cut. Why are there three walls directly next to each other, apparently all running roughly parallel to each other in NS direction? It is most probable that not all walls were built or used contemporarily, but that we have the case of buildings being built against cut older structures. What cut what can only really be decided when extending the trench towards west. Why does the interesting stuff always come at the edges of the trench??
JHB continued to take out lenses of fill in Space 342. It now become most obvious that the room fill is sloping towards the interior of the space. The are removing smaller lenses (U. 16938, U.16939) of fill in the centre, which seem to have accumulated on top of each other and on top of a seemingly massive and rather homogenous and compact yellowish grey layer which is already visible on all sides of the space. It might all be brickish material, such as the lumps of building materials they find at the bottom of their lenses (U.16952). At the moment this materials do not really look like collapse, but rather like refuse.
DLG is still having a hard time defining structures in Spaces 343 and 462 (which are on top of each other). First thing, and very important, he noticed that walls F.3304, 3305 and 3306 still continued further down and we did not yet reach their bases. After a lot of scratching and removing of loose fill and animal disturbances, we were able to define outlines of buttresses F.3337 and F.3338, while not yet tackling F.3339. The remainders of buttresses F.3307 (on top of 3337) and 3309 (on top of 3339) are visible, but badly disturbed. F.3308 on top of buttress F.3338 is more of a ghost feature, its meagre remainders were possibly removed during excavation in 2009, but later noted by the excavators. He then moved over to the western half of the room to define further wall F.3348, the supposed western wall of the lower Space 462. After scratching a bit, it turned out that both the supposed wall and the surrounding fill (U.16949) are mud brick material mixed with the lumpy red mortar and a lot of other inclusions. We might have to abandon the feature number and redefine the deposit as fill. It is very interesting that 343/462 seems to be filled with building materials and few artefacts, compared to the other rooms. The brick material does not seem like collapse when considering that it is mixed with sherds and bone and that it is very high above any possible floor.
EMM follows her surface (U.16947) through the passage between Spaces 449 into Space 450 while still coming up with a lot of finds and small finds in the fill above the surface (U.16942).
DKK started removing another layer of room fill (U.16950) in Space 340 in order to expose the ash lenses (U.16951) that seem to be scattered all over the room, but mostly in its southeastern part. The ash of U.16951 seems to be mixed with other material, possibly sand, and is quite firm. Right next to one of them, she found two animal arm bones which seem polished or smoothened (16950.x2). The ash probably belongs to the disposed refuse that makes up the room fill, but we have to observe its position within the room to reconstruct the deposition event that produced U.16951. |
