| Entry: | I have been here for a week now, and this is my first entry. I am working in building 97 in the South Area, and so far I have excavated a hearth (units 19695, 19697, part of F.3541) and a fire spot (F. 3545) together with Jack, and a pit (U. 20308, 20310) in the central part of one of the platforms (F. 3454) which may be a burial.
We started out with the hearth, that we initially called an oven before Ian told us that it was rather a hearth since it didn't seem to have had a "roof" - it consisted of an almost circular ring of clay lining, and a clay floor. The feature had already been exposed at the end of the 2011 season, under a succession of later ovens. The top fill (U. 19695) is most likely just a burtn part of the lower clay construction (U. 19697), since the excavation report from 2011 states that no fill was found in this hearth. After removing the clay construction, another hearth seem to be located under it, seen as a layer of charcoal. We have given it a unit number (19699) because we found pottery in it that risked being lost, but we left it for the time being since it is earlier than the dirty floor on which the removed hearth was constructed.
In the same dirty floor, close to the hearth, was the fire spot. It was dug into the floor, and had been used at least twice since there were two layers of charcoal fill in it separated by a clay lining. The fire spot is likely contemporary with the hearth and may have been used to store embers from it (smart idea from Arne).
Before excavating the pit in the platform I removed remains of a plaster surface on the western end of the platform (U. 20306) and remains of a makeup layer (U. 20307) underneath it, since they were later than the plaster surface through which the pit has been dug. The patches of makeup were given the name unit number as the makeup on the adjacent central floor since they were interpreted as being contemporary. The stratigraphical relations between the platform F. 3454 and the central floor area are difficult to grasp, since the platform seems to have been cut by layer 20307 - hence floor layers in the central area must have been removed before 20307 was added. We can see stratigraphy in the cut section of the platform F3454, but 20307 is a homogenous makeup that "meets" the platform vertically.
The pit was recognices as a dark area in the central part of the platform, where no plaster remained. The cut could be followed down through the interface between the fill and the surrounding floor layers where stratigraphy remained. We got uncertain though as to whether the pit is really a burial, for one since they are usually shallow and secondly because the fill didn't really look like gravefill - it was more like makeup material. When neither a skeleton nor a basal boundary had been reached at a depth of 0,1 m I stopped digging and we decided to let the pit wait (if it goes deeper) until we have reached that level through taking away the surrounding floor levels.
Building 97 is generally quite difficult to understand when it comes to phases and stratigraphy, since the different areas (platforms, floors, basins etc) often seem to "meet" without overlap, but we'll figure it out eventually… |
