| Entry: | Written on the 16th, and out of date even then.
A brief review of recent events on site: On the 12th and 13th, Richard and myself completed the pre-ex. plan for Building 18, which allowed Craig to start excavation of the east wall in Building 7, which is being removed for safety reasons. This was completed today - the 16th. On saturday I moved into Space 159, to continue excavation of the north wall - F.73. This was one of Lucy's projects, but she was off-site with the bug that's doing the rounds. Richard planned the area beneath east-west wall F.406, which we had previously excavated. To free up F.73, I first had to number up and excavate the in-fill immediately to the north of the wall - this became (4465). After this had been partially removed, I began archive and floatation sampling of the brick - (4240), and mortar - (4241). The combined brick and mortar number is (4242). This was completed yesterday evening. Lucy was back on site today, and took over the paperwork, while I finished excavating the wall. All done by mid. afternoon. Tomorrow i've been roped into a heavy res. session, which I don't mind theoretically - so why do I feel so depressed ! ( I'ts the 17th now, and this never happened. ) Other news - the bad vibes that have been brewing up between diggers and workmen, came to a head on thursday evening - certainly fuelled by being the sixth day of a long and hard working week. The workmen had been particularly slack throughout the day, which had become increasingly irritating, although it hadn't unduly affected us, as we had'nt been involved in the removal of backfill. However, towards the end of the day, Craig had about eight zembils' worth of spoil he needed shifting. There quickly followed complaints that we were over-filling the zembils. Normally this would be fair comment, but to make an issue of this, when you have had so few to carry, and have been lazy all day, left us feeling incredulous. Words were spoken in Turkish and English, the atmosphere rapidly deteriorated, and soon zembils were being thrown to the ground in fits of pique. We were all feeling angry, and I was worried that things would escalate into a nasty scene - if one of us had snapped at them, or if they had hit one of us accidently with a thrown zembil. In the end, we made it to the end of the day without events getting completely out of hand. We all left the site with a very sour atmosphere hanging in the air, and all glad to see the back of each other for a couple of days. Back together again today, after Shahina had spoken to both them and us. The atmosphere seems much improved, the tension's lessened, and everyone's making an effort. I hope it holds out. If we get through the final phase of removal of backfill from Space 165 without further incident, things should ease up, and we'll all be o.k.Entered By: Jez Taylor |
