| Entry: | Today after breakfast we had a very nice trench tour, during which everybody talked about their area and we discussed details of the contexts and the strategy for the following days.
GWN and JHB spent the day in B.98 wrapping up the contexts we have till now and cleaning it for a 3D-photo session in the end of the day. GWN removed fill 17285 from in between F.3367 and the corner of F.2429 and F.3327 to make the walls better visible. He removed only ca.5cm and came down to material that looks like mud brick. However, this corner is tricky and we do not have the bigger context around it, so I would like not to get caught in the NW corner of the trench again – removing main B.98 and look under floor 16977 is more important, as this is the first time we actually have a floor as a clear border between phases. JHB remove the remaining bit of F.3335 and then scraped back the interface of what was north of it. Afterwards we saw what seems to be the eastern part of F.2428, a wall without bricks, being abut by a wall that has clearly recognisable bricks with thick dark grey mortar lines – F.3367 or some other features? We will have to have a closer look. There are many phases in this small area of the building.
FKJ finished exposing surface 17277 with the finds clusters 17287 on top of it, after which she took a photo and collected the sherds of 17287. On Saturday, we can clarify the walls and remove the floor to look under it.
In Building 106, KTW removed more of buttress F.3301 and then explored the connection between F.5058 and the parallel wall F.2424 which is part of B.105. The bricks of the one wall are set flash against the other, with no space in between them noticeable. I am not sure what this means about their chronological relation- they might have been erected at the same time, as they also are built from the same material. During the trench tour, we discussed about why B.106 might be the only one with double walls in Trench 5 so far. One idea was that the walls were meant to carry something heavy, another one is that that building might have been the oldest and had no other buildings around it to support it.
After this, KTX started to remove the high southern part of F.5058 and was able to remove two smaller bricks entirely, which he documented in a picture.
In B.105, EUR, CMF and I spent the day on more wall clarification. CMF finished layer 17282 in the northern part of the room and then joined us in the south. EUR and CMF scraped fill 17283 from buttress F.3366, which still is not entirely clear, however. Its upper part seems heavily disturbed and blurred by surrounding fill which also has much disintegrated dark brick in it. During removing fill 17283 east of F.3366, the lower walls became better visible, the southward continuation (?) of F.3303 and F.3368 under F.3364 and F.3341. A thin new wall feature, running parallel to it west of it seems to show up by the end of the day. During the trench tour, I presented by observation that F.2424 was sitting on fill, and was corrected by my colleagues who reminded my that its eastern face, visible from inside B.106, is non-interrupted. This made me scrape back some more, and really I found the plastered western face of the wall inside B.105. This western face is heavily curved – its upper part comes into the room much farther than the lower part. To me, this does not look like a leaning or slumped wall, the curve is to round and perfect; maybe they wanted to build the wall like this? |
