| Entry: | In Space 341, EUR and KTX removed fill layer 16973 and continued scraping the remainders of fill from the walls. In places it is difficult to distinguish fill from wall, especially with buttress F. 5057. Layer 16980 was not yet started. It contains an ashy lense visible in the section of the sondage, so we will go down to the top of this first.
JHB continued uncovering cluster 16981 after we removed the plaster accumulation 15373 and the fill 16982 overlying the cluster and underlying the plaster unit. Last year there were discussions as to whether 15373 represents collapse, debris or an installation. Upon removal, 15373 did not seem like in situ collapse, as the pieces are of two different kinds of materials and too spread out. The only part that seems installation-like is the plaster lump lying directly in front of buttress F.5052 following its outline, with a roughly even upper surface. In total, the lumps have to uneven surfaces and orientations, though, to be certain about the interpretation as installation. It rather seems to represent a cluster of large marl lumps, too thick to have been plaster of a wall or floor, but maybe representing raw material.
Cluster 16981 surprises us with many nice things such as pot sherds, two longish bone tools and a little pile of phytoliths that seem to come from grass-like plants. All these finds are positioned directly on the floor, or separated from it by 1 – 1.5cm of fill. I think it could be possible that this thin layer of fill developed post-depositionally and the artefacts originally lay on the floor directly.
PTW and I spent time clarifying floor in Space 452, where it gets a bit messy. For now all floor in the building is called 16977 but we will have to give more unit numbers to it as it is made up from different patches of floor, of which several can be found in 452. There is the white plaster of Space 449, overlapping with floor made from more clayey and orangey material in 450, which runs into 452 where, however, another patch of white marl floor can be found and, it seems, floor made from grey clay. The fill of 452 is very homogeneous, so in parts it is difficult to distinguish greying clay floor from fill. The white marl floor in 452 runs up to buttress F.3326, but under what was defined as wall F.3324. This is the first sign that the stratigraphy of walls and floors in B.98 might turn out to be complicated. Maybe we only got the outlines of wall F.3324 wrong, though. We might cut away parts of it to verify this. Of the fill scraped out of the “wall”, we got a beautiful fragment of pot stand. |
