| Entry: | Last night it was raining and this caused several problems in our trench. The tent was not able to hold the water on several places so it made dozen of wet areas in the buildings we excavate. As I reached till the supposed bottom level of the buttress (U. 16974) I scraped and clean it in order to be documented and photographed. However, due to the puddle very next to the buttress it was not able to shoot a photo as the color was quite different than its original state. Therefore we decided to start removal of new buttress (U. 18858) till the puddle is dried. This construction is the biggest of all within building 98, so it necessitates different approach of removal, also because of JHB removal of F. 5052 which can cause mixing of our dirt and finds. Consequently, I started removing SE quarter of it which also provides more detailed insight within the buttress structure. Soon after taking away the top level, outlines of mud brick emerged along with mortar bellow. This was reason to slow the removal process and to pay more attention to buttress structure and its features. Scraping of the buttress frontal side it uncovered more outlines of mud bricks as well as the bottom level of plaster possibly associated with later floor of the building. This should be verified tomorrow.
This day was also excited by finding the first figurine which might be a good start to discoveries close to my research interest. It was animal (bull?) head with the line of encrusted dots, but however I hope some anthropomorphic figurines will appear soon, although they are quite rare on the West Mound. Today it was also an announcement that James Mellaart passed away in Sunday and we’ll do a moment of silence at South Shelter in his memory. No matter the critiques of his work I find him as quite important for opening a completely new page in Neolithic archaeology by discovering one of the most significant and outstanding Prehistoric sites in the world. As I feel quite emotionally by being for the first time on site that it is so important for my research, I still wonder how it is possible the man who discover it to die just in the first season I’m joining the research teams? |
