| Entry: | We spent yesterday and today following the plans we made in the strategy discussion on Tuesday.
PTW continued exposing buttresses F.3355 and F.3356 in Building 107/Space 462, which is a time-consuming thing as firstly a lot of soil has to be moved and secondly the construction features are not easily recognisable, as usual. While the two buttresses now are location with near-certainty, the very NW corner of the building kept some surprises for us, including large dark brick which sits horizontally within the room fill next to wall F.5074; it is not quite clear whether they abut as the face of this wall is also not entirely clear. The brick seems to be a purposeful construction based on its position, but cannot be related to any surface, floor, wall base or other feature that would indicate it was used as a bench/platform or similar thing.
KTX drew the SE corner of Building 106. Looking at it again, we were quite certain that the red soil we saw belonged to F.3314 under F.2427 and represent the top of the older wall already exposed. Thus, after drawing, he started to scrape back the grey material (F.2427) to reveal the reddish brown material (F.3314). By the end of Thursday, he had exposed the very irregular upper surface of the stump of F.3314 in the southernmost part. This stump, in most parts, had been covered by a thick layer of mortar before wall F.2427 was built on top. Of the latter, only 2.5 brick layers remained in the southern parts, but it is a bit thicker in the northern part. KTX then proceeded to cut a section through the remains of buttress F.3302, in order to expose the lowermost plaster layer that separates it from the older construction F.3359. The section is supposed to show the brick and mortar lines of the buttress.
EUR and JHB removed the remaining fill in Spaces 340 and 341 to expose the floor 16977. The floors in both rooms turned out to be a bit more complicated than in the rest of the building. In Sp.340, were so far only found it in the NW corner of the room, were it is quite undulating, and possibly small patches of it in the rest of the room; most of it might be destroyed or maybe not found yet. In the fill, a suspicious very regular round dark patch became visible, already slightly below the level of the preserved floor, that was interpreted by JHB to be a post hole, based on the brighter “halo” around it representing the fill of the cut that prepared the post hole. I am not so sure about this interpretation; we would have to see the feature in section. Rodents can build quite regular burrows. In Space 341, towards the western part of the room, patches of plaster could be found on top of the floor, maybe representing installations, but again we have to have a closer look on Saturday.
I spent the days clarifying walls in Building 98 by scratching around their newly exposed bases. In Space 341, I am not yet finished, but already it is clear that floor 16977 predates the walls of Building 98. The floor runs under all construction features, separated from them by a layer of fill that is very shallow in the east (F.3324, F.3326, F.3333) and increases in thickness and quantity of finds towards west. Buttress F.5053/5054 and wall F.2413/5055 are sitting on 15-20cm of fill on top of the floor. That these fill layers continued into the rooms (e.g. cluster 16981, in Space 450 and under buttress F.5057) verifies that the floor cannot have been used during the occupation of Building 98. Also, the builders of B.98 apparently were not aware of the fact that a perfect plaster floor could be found 15cm below the level they decided to construct their building on; one can assume that if they had known, they would have re-used the floor for their Building 98.
Thus, B.98 is really ready to come out as soon as we finished clearing the floor and documenting the situation – hopefully by Sunday. |
