| Entry: | The beginning of my day was spent sweeping b. 106, prepping it for 3D photo scan. After this, I went back to the northeast corner of the room and resumed attempting to understand how the North and Eastern walls joined together. After removing another course from the Northern wall, things remained relatively unclear. The combination of so many animal burrows with variant brick size and mortar depth/presence proved very difficult to untangle. It still appears that the walls are not properly bonded together, but again, it is extremely difficult to say one way or the other. Perhaps removing more of the eastern wall would help, but that will have to wait until next year as the southeastern corner--the joint between the four buildings of the trench--came calling. By the time I got there, there was little time left in the day, but it was quickly determined that the first order of business would be to lower the northeastern corner of b. 105 down to the level of the southeastern corner of b. 107. This corner proved to be far better preserved than any of the corners of b. 107 (there were still animal burrow disturbances, but they were not as disruptive of understanding as in 107). The material of both the mud brick and mortar was also vastly different. The mud brick was made of a far crumblier silty, almost ashy gray material and the mortar was a very sandy white material as opposed to the dark brown clay mortar in 107. The materials in these two houses was also different from either of the materials from either b. 106 and 98. It seems strange that four adjacent buildings that share such similar plans would be made of such vastly different materials. It is also a shame that our trench only contains one example of each as it is difficult to make larger generalizations about the reason for such differences with only one representative example. |
