| Entry: | Second last day in the trench, and a exciting day. Apart from very nice small finds, and in general many finds, we attributed two new building numbers: The building encompassing Spaces 310 and 454 is now Building 106, since its southern wall (F.3352) was defined yesterday. Space 343 is Building 107, as DLG defined its western wall today (see below).
CMB and JHB finished excavation in Building 105 (U.16966, with still many nice finds). The construction features are now well visible. The western wall F.3352 is disturbed both from the top and from the east (plaster!), but its outlines clear. The “benches” F.3303 and F.3310 are already too high to be actual benches to sit on, but we might just stick with the term in spite of another one. F.5062 continues to have beautiful firm plaster on its faces. F.3353 has irregular rectangular outlines; we still do not know how to interpret it – it could be called a platform for now. JHB and CMB spotted patches of dark grey brick in the corner of F.3346 and F.3311, in front of (south of) F.5061 and just south of F.5062 and F.5063, in between the buttresses and the section. So, there might be more constructions coming next year. Building 105 is already beautifully furnished though, although we do not really know how these internal constructions were used. Nearly all internal features are destroyed in parts, and the destruction must have been done before the building was filled in or during the infilling process; this might indicate abandonment rituals or procurement of raw material for new construction.
JFB drew F.3351 and F.3354 south of Space 454 and then levelled in the area of F.3341, F.3345, F.2424 and F.5058 to define these walls. The expected corner of F.3341 and F.3352, the southwest corner of Building 105, is destroyed by a pit/disturbance. So is the western and eastern part of F.3345, so we do not actually know where this wall is going. The point where walls F.3345, F.2424 and F.5058 meet is also disturbed. So, all we know at the moment is that there probably were buildings abutting Building 106 and Building 105 from the south.
The southern wall of Building 106 (F.3352) had quite a thick plaster coating towards the interior of Space 454 (plaster exposed by RHB and HLS today); its lower part was cut by pit F.3331, not much, but recognisable. F.2427 and the south eastern corner of the building are a bit strange. Either the wall has a wobbly western face or we are already dealing with two walls on top of each other, whose interface is unclear as pit F.3331 cut into it. F.5058 is a solid wall without surprises, though. Its plaster is patchy. The southern wall F.3352 has a curving northern face and F.3352 and F.5058 meet at a funny angle, forming a quite pointy corner. No reason for this seems obvious. The building makes a slanted impression, seen from the top. The southwest corner was actually quite interesting; when removing the remains of room fill (U.16967) left in the southeast and southwest corners of the building (which might still contain parts of the pit fill, as the interface between pit and room fill was not in all parts very clear), many nice finds such as large pieces of pot and ground stone were found in this pointy corner. We are not yet down to the level of the plastered surface U.16932 in this southwest corner, but it seems that the surface does not really continue here. We will see tomorrow.
EMM and XHB drew and documented Space 450, 449 and 452. XHB scraped off a bit more fill of the plastered “step” U.16941. Its plaster now seems chunky, with stones and fill in between. The construction is either badly disturbed, very poorly built or not a construction. Its position between F.3335 and F.3321, though, indicate that it is indeed a little construction which might still continue further down. Plaster feature U.15373 did not become clearer after staring at it for a day.
DKK removed the remains of ash layer U.16951, finding several blackened clay balls in between the ash. She then removed an arbitrary layer of room fill (U.16969) underneath and around the ash layer. Afterwards, the room fill was back to normal – reddish grey or brown with inclusions like plaster, clay and sherds. Tomorrow, she will go down another bit to bring Space 340 to the level of Spaces 450, 452 and 449. We will also have to deal with wall F.2413/5055 tomorrow and with the fact that the ash seems to run into/under it. I still hope we did not get the face of the wall so far (it is not plastered) and find a nice, continuous wall when scraping back a few centimetres.
DLG finished exposing the corner between F.3344 and F.5074 northwest of Space 343 (removed fill U.16968). We could not see it from the top completely, because the total station point is in that spot, but we got the corner inside the room. Although the building sequence of the features surrounding Space 343 and 462 is not yet clear, we could not help but admit that we have four walls surrounding a building, and attributed a building number to Space 343: Building 107! There are still two major unresolved questions concerning this building: where was its floor/walking surface (problem with the different base levels of the walls, see diary from yesterday)? And did it have a western buttress? Well, there always has to be something to look forward to for the next season!
Tomorrow will be spent scratching down the remains of the units nearly finished today, drawing, cleaning and being happy about the great results of this season. |
