| Entry: | Work on two opposite parts of building 98 was on excavation menu today. The first half of the day I spent helping JHB in digging and defining the northern half of western wall. I was working at the corner of this wall and the northern one, trying to define theirs connecting plaster corner at the bottom. After I found it I was clearing the corner and making a small ‘window’ into the eastern wall of building 106 in order to notice the technique difference between walls. The plaster corner was identical to one I was excavating two days before, so it can be confirmed that the ‘Chalcolithic masons’ had patterns in establishing wall foundations and its plastering. Also these mudbricks were full with inclusions, although I notice it was less than in its southern part.
After lunch I started to work on removal of floor of building 98 in the area between southern wall and the southern buttress (U.18367). We decide to go layer by layer bellow and not just to dig into it. And surely, such decision was quite worthy. After removing the first very thin top layer of the floor more than twenty clay balls appeared. Although this is common find for Catal teams I was really happy to find a deposition of larger number of common objects. The clay balls were placed above solid white phytolits layer which is already known for upper layers of this building. Although such context slows the tempo and urge to understand what it is bellow the floor it is noteworthy that there is a depositional pattern in this building which indicate that clay balls were placed within this building several times, and probably in different stages.
The work on figurines continued these days. More I work on figurines there are more amazing details related with them. Each figurine provides excellent information on specific corporeality features as well as on the way they are modeled and probably used. I started to write a description diary for any of the figurines so a lot of information are recorded and will be used in papers we will write with PFB. For the moment I mainly work on human figurines, but in the following week I’ll continue with animals’ representations and abstract ones i.e. geometrics as they are referred to here at Catalhoyuk. A big number of clay objects which were previously considered as figurines I will not include in such group as they do not have any confirming detail which can be with high percentage of certainty associated with human or animal body. |
