| Entry: | This is a summary for work done today and also Thursday 16th August.
In Building 105, EUR and CMF worked on removing the mud brick concentrations 18364 in the northeast and northwest corner of the building. In EUR’s northeast corner, the brick material was so dense, with several plaster and mortar fragments and lines in between, that we were not sure and I still am not sure that no construction feature was hid in between the eroded bricks. No structure, no lines, no shape was visible, but the brick is just so dense. We left a bit of the concentration towards the surrounding walls F.3310, F.3303 and F.3365, to be able to reconstruct the original height should this turn out to be a construction feature when we come further down – as still some of the dark brick material in the very corner continues down into unexcavated fill. In the northwest corner, things looked different. CMF removed a rather thin layer of the bricks, and then came down to a lense of fill 18366, which was characterised by its many plaster and mortar lumps. Two of the large plaster fragments had a red-slipped surface, many little stones and chaff in it, and had interesting shapes. On seemed to form a rectangular corner, plastered on the inner and outer edge. The other one had a protruding rounded part. Both might have belonged to rather decorative elements of architecture, but so far we found nothing even remotely similar on a wall, so we have no idea where this might come from. The fragments broke in some parts when taken out and are now in the conservation lab for consolidation.
After the two brick concentrations were out, CMF and EUR continued excavating down with room fill number 18356 in the entire building. Towards the end of today we decided to make the centre of the room a sondage and excavate it down to a hopefully existing floor. The fill in the centre of the room can easily be distinguished from buttresses F.3353, F.3366 and F.3365, while clarifying walls in the corners of the building has proved to take more time. A bump of dark brick that might be a construction feature has turned up in front of buttress F.5062 – it might be the missing fourth buttress going with F.3366, F.3353 and F.3363.
I continued to clarify walls in the southern part of the building and finished the southeast corner, means that I removed all the fill left in front of walls F.2424 and F.3341, in top of F.3303 and F.3368. This fill contained much disintegrated brick, therefore it took more time. I got the feeling that the thick plaster on F.2424 and F.3341 might continued behind F.3303 and F.3368, which would however indicate that the latter two are younger than the first two. Also interesting were two little depressions in the tops of F.3368 and F.3303. In a ca. 15x20cm depression in the top of southern F.3303, I found two large obsidian flakes or cores (17259.x25, x.27), half a vessel (17259.x28) and the fragment of a grinding stone with a lot of orange ochre on (17259.x26 with s5). This might actually be an intentional deposition, but the indications were not strong enough for me to really believe this. That the finds were found to close together is unusual, but they were not specially arranged, and the fill around them was so compact and mixed.
In Building 107, DLG removed the top (ca.30cm) of wall F.3344 which was still contaminated with a lot disturbances. He then cut back the fill behind it, which turned out not to be a wall, despite of such suspicions last year, into a nice stable step that will secure the section. After this, he started removing the uppermost walls of the building, and tackled the corner of F.2426 and F.2425/5050. This is one of the parts where the walls are preserved more than one or two layers high, and also this is the meeting point of four buildings. He uncovered a layer of bricks with mostly regular shapes. A thick gap separated F.2426 from F.5051 of Building 105. In this gap, there seem to be several large lumps of mortar (18368), which might have been put here intentionally or not, but which seem to be of the same material as the mortar of F.2426, which might therefore indicate that Building 107 (i.e. its uppermost walls) was built later than B.105. During the construction process, some of the mortar of B.107 might have ended up in the gap. Only a thin, irregular gap was left towards B.98. DLG will also pay special intention to the four-buildings-meeting point, which could be crucial for the internal chronology. At the moment it looks like F.2424 of B.105 might stand on top of bricks of F.5058 of B.106.
GWN and JHB continued on the three wall section sondages in Building 98. They came down to the original outlines of F.2413/5055. These are recognisable by a plaster line further in than the outmost plaster, and fill in front of this, which was before covered by the thicker upper part of the wall. We decided to leave this fill, as it is hard to separate the frehs plaster from it without harming the plaster, and also as the plaster is actually much better visible against the fill. Also, we will have to leave most of the walls like this until next year, and the fill protects the plaster.
We will not finish with the nice, organic re-building process of B.98 that I had envisaged in the beginning of the season, taking out buttresses, taking out walls, then the floor. We will leave most parts of the walls in place after the solved the questions we had before the sectioned them. Also, GWN opened a sondage through floor 16977 today to check what might be under it. I suspect we will find older walls under B.98, and room fill in between them. Therefore the sondage was chosen to be in the corner of wall F.3333 and buttress F.5057, where we might find two of the older constructions features. The first piece of information that came out of the sondage was that 16977 has only one layer, at least in this very spot. The fill directly under it was so compacted that it might represent an intentional preparation layer. After scraping a bit more, GWN uncovered a dense cluster of clay balls along the base of F.3333, and layer of phytoliths next to it. Not the entire cluster 18369 is visible yet, but it already seems like an intentional deposition.
KTX in Building 106 finished exposing our example layer and then drew it. Tomorrow it can be photographed and then removed. Until now, he left the outermost centimetres of the wall as a section through the brick layers, which proved very helpful during removal, and very informative on the photos. The problematic corner of F.3351 and F.5058 proved to have slightly irregular, but understandable, brick work.
PTW in Space 345 excavated fill 18365 under floor 17294 down ca.10cm and found nothing unusual except of a fragment of a human maxilla with two teeth. After this, he started excavating down another 25cm, to go down to and below the level of floor 16977 in B.98. PFB suggested that Space 345 might have a floor on the same level, but so far there is no indication of this. |
