| Entry: | GWN flattened the remains of buttress F.5053/5054 and then spent some time cleaning the surrounding floor 16977 of this buttress and also F.3326 from rain damage and several days of trampling, after which both features were photographed in dry and in wet state. GWN then joined JHB in his search for stratigraphic relations in the northern part of the building.
Now all four buttresses of B.98 but F.5052 are removed, except for their lowermost parts, which give us a plan view of the features, and their back parts where they meet the walls. The building looks quite spacious and inviting without the thick buttresses. It was amazing how many cubic meters of soil were contained in these four features only – the constructors of B.98 must have carried so much building material up to the construction site. We will take another 3D-photo session of the building with the walls still standing, and the stumps of the buttresses too. This will help to generate a model of the building with the older, smaller building phases of the four buttresses, whose outlines are only preserved in plan. For F.5052 to be cut back to the wall, we have to deal with the whole F.3335-F3320-F.2428-F.5052 situation.
JHB continued working on sorting out the stratigraphy of building features in northern Building 98. Yesterday we were quite sure that F.3335 is a short wall built alongside eastern F.2428, and that F.5052 was built abutting the beforementioned two features. This seemed to be confirmed by the material of F.5052 peeling of F.3335 nicely. This morning, JHB could not find this clear interface further down than 7cm from the preserved tops of the walls. This made us rethink the situation. It is possible that F.5052 was not built to abut F.3335, but the other way around. It is also possible that these two features are not rectangular cubes but have weird shapes, maybe one was built abutting and covering an already partially disturbed face of the other one. After some fruitless scratching, we decided to take down the area where F.2428, F.3320, F.3335 and F.5052 down 7cm from the top and flatten it out to check whether we can see cracks, gaps or plaster lines showing us the exact outlines of the features. This was quite successful, as we found several lines, but as usual there were animal burrows exactly where we suspected two gaps, and also we noticed that we have to widen the scrape area to include F.2429 and the top of F.3320 – this was started today and will be continued tomorrow.
DLG cleaned Building 107 for a series of 3D photos taken by PTW. DLG then started to remove a 30cm thick layer of room fill (16988) starting in the southeast corner of the building. The aim of this room fill removal is to hopefully reach the bases of the older walls F.3304, F.3305 and F.3306 and adjacent buttresses F.3307, F.3308, F.3309 and F.3355. The reason to go down 30cm at a time is that from the previous experience with this building, we cannot distinguish small-scale depositional events in the very homogenous fill that is characteristic for B.107. Also, the fill contains a high amount of disintegrated brick material that might, and absolutely does in the cases of the buttresses, blur the outlines of construction features. Fine-scale scratching brings absolutely nothing, as we know now. It seems we have to open larger areas in plan or section and cut into the construction features in B.107 by at least 2-3cm to be able to see them. Features show up in section or in plan because they are slightly darker and more homogeneous than the surrounding fill – this is never terribly clear, though, and once we removed the surrounding as the point of reference, we are left with a strangely formed irregular cube that does not look like a convincing wall.
EUR further removed the thick room fill layer 17259 in southern building B.105. He was trying to go down and expose an ash layer that shows up pretty clear in section and seemed to spread over nearly the entire room in a concave form, seemingly covering a heap of fill under it. This ash layer would have been a clear indication for separate depositional events, but EUR found it not to spread into the southernmost part of the room, where he instead came down to firmer fill and took this as the lower boundary of 17259.
CMF and FKJ finished removing room fill layer 17272 in northern building B.105, which is an arbitrary layer as there are no indications for depositional events. After this, we spent time to clarify the constructions features in and around the space, which takes time as the room fill also contains large lumps of building materials in tertiary position, but blurring the features. We will continue tomorrow.
KTX took down the corner of F.5058 and F.3351 in southwest B.106. This corner, when seen from inside the building, was the only area in B.106 where no brick and mortar lines were visible. We therefore wanted to see this in plan view. After exposing the top of a brick layer, we were able to see bricks and mortar, but they seemed to be smaller in scale and somewhat more disordered than in the rest of the building. As this was still a bit unclear, we decided to start again in the northern part of F.5058 and take the whole wall including the top of buttress F.3301 and the corner with F.3351 down to the top of the same brick layer F.2408 was taken down to, so we can see all four features in connection |
