| Entry: | Today I continued the work commenced yesterday (after two days of work at the archaeobotany lab) in Sp. 446, 452 and 451. My impressions on what is going on in the NE corner of Trench 5 can be summarised in the following points:
a) There IS a doorway connecting the lower level of Space 452 (a surface for which has not been found yet - the excavation of U. 16963 yesterday made it clear that we are dealing with roomfill in this Space, maybe a dumping area, since large amounts of fragmented pottery, animal bone and even two large ground stones were found) and the walking surface represented by Space 446. The removal of U. 16929 and the mudbrick wall that stood on top of it (F.3334) revealed the existence of a continuity between the plaster layer observed on the eastern side of F. 3320 and its southern side, making a clear plastered corner. This corner, which has a correlation in F. 3321 strongly suggests the presence of a doorway in this area.
b) The 'doorway hypothesis' could be further supported by the discovery between F. 3320 and F. 3321 of a possible series of plastered steps (U. 16941) connecting Spaces 452 and 446. The steps are slightly too narrow for human feet but no other explanation can be hypothesised for this feature. Initially it was thought that there were only two steps. However, today, upon excavation and levelling of U. 16963 , a horizontal plaster surface and a vertical lump of plaster were found to possibly be connected to the lower of the previously identified 'steps'. Excavation will resume tomorrow and expect to be able to confirm whether this plaster area is a third, lower step of our staircase.
In addition to working in space 452 and the transition to 446, I briefly worked with EMM in exposing the plaster feature (of unknown function) that is currently coming up in space 451 and which was given Unit number 15373. |
