| Entry: | Exciting day in B.106. KTX started the day wanting to take down the southern half of buttress F.3301 down to the preparation plaster layer 16999. While doing so, we had to face again the many plaster layers (so far summarised as 16932) in the corner of F.3301 and F.5058 in Space 454. We uncovered this in the last days of the last season and never investigated them thoroughly. When cleaning the plaster and looking at it again, everything seemed a bit clearer. The plaster layer 16999 that separated the older from the younger walls in B.106, comes out into the room, and runs down to connect to a plaster surface in the centre of the room (also 16932 so far). This connection is only preserved in a ca.5cm wide strip, as pit F.3331 cut the rest. A second layer was applied on top of this, and connects to the plaster on F.5058 and F.3301. This layer is only preserved in the very corner between those features. More lumps of plaster, so far not connected to anything, could be found on top of this. The whole assemblage of plaster surfaces seems partially cut by pit F.3331. Probably parts of its upper layers were removed by excavation last year before recognising the units. In the SW corner of B.106, between F.5058 and F.3352, last year we excavated fill with loads of artefacts. Now we discussed the possibility of a pit here, which cut the south of the plaster complex and also cut slightly into the corner of walls F.5058-3352; this corner always looked a bit weird.
A plaster surface that connects the interface between the old and the young walls and a floor that is below this interface seems a most unusual situation. This plaster layer must have been planned during the preparation for the construction of F.5058, F.2427 and F.2408. It covers either fill or an older construction in the corner of F.5058 and F.3301 in Space 454; we do not know yet what is under it. Any way, it forms a little bench-like feature, however with sloping surface. The floor, if it is one, is not on the level of any wall base, confirming the idea that people lived in B.106 surrounded by walls whose lower parts were old and whose upper parts were constructed later.
In Building 107, DLG scraped the lower parts of the construction features as he removed the rest of room fill 17262. In some parts, for example the northeast corner, we saw lines that might already indicate the bases of the older wall(s) (F.3305), but this has to be checked – the features were never easy to separate from fill in this Building.
In Building 105, EUR, SO, TET and CMF continued to excavate room fill (17263, 17259) and clean the surrounding walls, which in parts is tricky because the room fill is extremely mixed and contains large lumps of building materials; these materials seem like unused left-overs from constructions processes.
In Building 98, GWN took down buttress F.5053/5054 to the level where the fill around its foot starts. JHB finished cleaning the bottom of the removed southern part of F.5052. Nicely visible is the older version of the buttress, which has very rounded edges and is plastered. Several plaster surfaces belonging to the floor that is so far summarised as 16977 run up to the buttress plaster. We spent some time staring at these many different plaster patches, but recognising the many phases of the floor will be a task for the future, so we went on with feature removal. Next in line has to be the short wall F.3335 which abuts F.5052 in a way that we cannot remove the back part of the buttress without getting F.3335 out first.
I started excavating room fill in the small Space 345 (17266). The aim was to go down to floor level to be able to compare this to the level of 16977 in B.98. Surprisingly, I found a plaster surface (17277) after going down only a few centimetres. It consists of different kinds of material, a patch of limy plaster, and then greenish-grey clay around it. Against the walls, it seems to be disturbed. We’ll see. |
