| Entry: | Today was my first day on site, and my area looked much the way I had left it. The questions left from last year still remain and the first thing that needs addressing is the phasing of the Western wall and its relationship to the buttresses of room 107. Right now it appears that the later phase of the wall (as observed on other wall and in the western buttress) is floating on virtually sterile soil. This is difficult to understand as this phase of the other walls and the buttress are sitting on the earlier phase of the wall (that with white mortar--the later phase uses dark mortar). There are many more questions to be answered in this room, but I believe it is better to approach it systematically, piece by piece, so as to pay proper attention to each question and so as not to confuse myself by jumping around from place to place. the first thing I need to do is to properly clean and section the southwest corner which had been left high. This will hopefully show whether there is a built feature in that corner or if the raised section is merely room fill.
On a personal note, it is good to be back in the room again. Having been at Tayinat (an EB & Iron Age site with exclusively mud brick architecture, but vastly different construction techniques) and Hazor (a Bronze Age site with mud brick superstructure on stone foundations), room 107 presents fairly unique questions that are a cool challenge for me. |
