| Entry: | We are preparing towards the end of the field season this year, and so far all spaces and excavation areas seem to come to a smooth and logical end ... let’s hope nothing unexpected (burials, gold, ovens) will happen in the next days!
DKK drew Space 340 and afterwards, assisted by PTW, removed the ash of U.16951 in a way to collect as much as possible for floatation, but not contaminate it with other soil. Space 340 shall be excavated down another 10cm tomorrow to be on the same level with Spaces 450, 452 and 449.
EMM and XHB finished exposing the plaster feature U.15373 in the western half of Space 450. The feature does not get any clearer, though. It looks like several block of marl set next to each other in a rough way, but recognisably with purpose. The plaster covers the entire area under bench F.3334 (the “bench” was constructed on 3-4cm of fill lying on top of the plaster blocks). It might have extended slightly more into the room, but removed because not recognised as part of a feature before the bench was out. In the centre of the room, the feature U.15373 is narrower, to then again become thicker in the south in front of buttress F.5057. U.15373 was set directly abutting both buttress F.5057 and buttress F.5052 and in parts it looks like the plaster of the feature is lipping up against the plastered surfaces of the two buttresses. Still, nobody has any idea of what the plaster construction might have been intended and used for. We have not yet exposed its full height, and will leave this to next year. XHB also removed some fill that was still left around the plastered “step” U.16941. The plastered surface (we do not know whether it was applied over fill or over mud brick) indeed forms two tiny “steps”, which would not have been suitable for human feet, though, probable. It seems to continue further down into unexcavated fill. By now, we can be sure that the plaster covered an intentionally prepared threshold that connected Space 446, where the walking level would have been on roughly the same level as the level of excavation this year (so, where we are walking on now), with Space 452, where the walking surface was on a lower level, which is not yet identified. Bench F.3334 had its base higher up, F.3335 still continues down. With F.3334, U.15373 and U.16941, we now have three episodes of re-furnishing and probably re-use of B.98 after it had been already abandoned and filled with refuse. Establishing a chronology of these re-furnishing events will require detailed post-ex evaluation and might become tricky as comparing base levels does not give secure evidence, as the base of F.3334 shows.
Excavation in Spaces 450, 452 and 449 is finished for this season, apart from some minor scratching XHB will do around U.16941 tomorrow.
DLG continued excavation soil around buttresses F.3307 and F.3337 in Spaces 343/462, finding new construction features in the process. He is now on a level where wall F.3344 is visible sitting on top of the very homogeneous “garden soil” fill described earlier, under which more heterogeneous and compact material became visible. A chat with architect Mary, who visited our trench yesterday, gave us the information that homogenous, sandy, fine grained fill such as the one under F.3344 is actually very good and stable foundation material – we originally assumed that it was unstable. The material under that garden soil looks like the brick material of wall F.3304, F.3305 and F.3306, the walls surrounding Space 462. There are not, however, any mortar lines visible so far. So, while the western wall of Space 462 is still dubious, DLG found the western buttress, consisting of the same grey brick with lighter grey mortar as the other features of the space (F.3306, 3305, 3304, 3337, 3338, 3339). This new buttress was attributed feature number F.3355.On top of it undulating top, remains of another buttress became visible (F.3356), which consists of the same reddish grey brick and lumpy red mortar as the features forming space 343 (F.2426, F.2425/5050, F.5074) and of F.3344. Both F.3355 and F.3356 must abut walls that are not yet visible so far; they might be only a few cm behind the current section in the fill under F.3344. Even if they are only a bit further to the west, though, we will not be able to find them this year without removing F.3344 and a whole bunch of fill. F.3344 is getting more dubious considering these observations. Yesterday it was noticed that wall F.2426 abuts F.3344, but was put against the plastered eastern face of F.3344. Today we saw that the base of F.2426 is stepped – it is higher in the western part just east of F.3344 than in the western part. This is not strange, though, as the lower wall F.3304 was probably cut and levelled before F.2426 was put on top – why not cut a stepped foundation?
The fact that F.2426 abuts F.3344 indicates that the two walls along with F.2425/5050 and F.5074 must have been standing and surrounding a space at some point. When imagining a floor or walking surface connecting the bases of those walls, though, one comes up with a quite slanted surface. It is hard to imagine that Chalcolithic people liked that. So, what was the western border of Space 343? It is not impossible that the garden soil fill was used as a wall, but it is hard to imagine such a construction. If there is a wall further west of F.3344, this wall would still have been in the way.
So many unsolved questions in Space 343/462. Instead of scratching around further in the southwest corner, we decided to remove the quite large chunk of (probably still quite disturbed) room fill (U.16968) in the northwest corner (formed by walls F.3344 and F.5074 and a virtual corner between them). If F.3344 and F.5074 meet, their corner would be just outside trench borders in a spot where the total station was standing so far. We might have to remove this bit of topsoil tomorrow.
JFB levelled the area under burial F.3343, finding two beautiful mud brick walls. The quite thick southern wall of Space 454 (F.3351) is made up of two rows of bricks next to each other, dark grey brick and white mortar. Towards Space 454, it is covered in thick white plaster. Running directly south of it and parallel without any recognisable gap is the wall of the next building already (F.3354), whose southern edge (face) is just within trench borders. We now have the outlines of a small, symmetrical building consisting of Spaces 310 and 454. The Byzantine pit F.3331 turned out to be a particularly well placed pit once more. Its upper edge was just in front of (north of) wall F.3351, but it is cutting into the wall in the lower part, because it has a concave (undercutting) form. In the southwest and southeast corner of Space 454, tiny bits of the original room fill of 454 are left, which RHB started removing today (U.16967) in order to expose the plastered wall face. The pit therefore cut away most of the original (and, judging from the meagre remains, very interesting) room fill of 454, except for small rests on the southern (U.16967) and western (U.16960) side, it cut parts of buttresses F.3301 and F.3302 and of wall F.2427 and maybe of the plastered surface U.16932, but left enough of everything so we can still understand the space. A miracle. Or maybe the Byzantine people understood more of Chalcolithic architecture than we think?
JHB and CMB continued room fill excavation in Space 342/Building 105 (U.16966). It turned out that the deposit with mixed colourful soil and hard lumps of marl found in the northern, eastern and central part of the room, does not spread all over the space. In the south, just north of the section, they found a darker lense, and the fill surrounding buttress F.5062 in the west is rather homogeneous yellowish grey, compact fill. U.16966 therefore contains material from all three deposits and the other units excavated this season (U.16965, 16958, 16959, 16952, 15360) probably all were part of the thick deposit with marl lumps and loose fill; U.15359 and U.15367/15368 were part of the compact yellow fill in the west.
During room fill excavating, CMB noticed a large lump of dark grey mud brick and yellow mortar just in front of (west of) buttress F.5063. After scratching off some non-brickish fill, the lumps turned out to be a construction feature. Its top is obviously cut away on an oblique angle, mortar lines are visible. This new feature (F.3353) must be a different feature than buttress F.5063, because the buttress is plastered all around. It is not clear whether there is a plaster layer between F.5063 and F.3353, but either the new feature was built abutting the plaster of F.5063 and its upper part cut (less likely), or the new feature did not have the same height as F.5063 as was built on the “feet” of the buttress (more likely). In the latter case, we would deal with a bench-/ platform-like feature.
Both the observation of different deposits on the current level of excavation in Sp.342 and the find of F.3353 changed our excavation strategy for the rest of the season. We decided to level the room fill, take it down to the lowest point reached so far in the centre of the room, as U.16966 now turned out to not be “clean” any more, but contain several deposits, and also in order to get the clear outlines of F.3353 as well as the “benches” F.3310 and F.3311, which as so far only slightly blurry dark grey patches in the planum. CMB and JHB seemed quite happy to finally take out the lumps they had been scratching around for several days. The levelling will be done tomorrow and then we can start final documentation of the building. |
