| Entry: | After a relaxing weekend I stayed at the dig house to help in the botanical laboratory, yesterday. I mostly supervised the workmen at the flotation machines and entered new data to the database.
Today, we started to excavate a new unit, still in the same building 105 and the same space 342. CMF started in the north-western corner and I started in the north-eastern corner. At first I took out a sherd that still belonged to unit 16966.
In the whole north-eastern corner between the features 3310, 3303, 3353 and 5061 the soil consists of homogenous lumps of different materials:
1) Mud brick
2) Plaster of different shapes and colours (white, and on one spot in middle of this area burnt yellow plaster)
3) Yellow and light brown homogenous lumps
4) Ashy, black spots with charcoal and white lime inclusions.
Some of the lumps have been removed (e.g. a yellow firm lump). A large piece of charcoal was found in a brown homogenous lump near feature 3310. All the ash lenses were sampled for phytolith analysis.
Two types of mud brick came up in the north-eastern corner. I immediately came across a mud brick against the wall of feature 3303. A ca. 2 cm thick plaster line (on one spot disturbed, probably by a barrow) marks the outlines of this mud brick. This mud brick seems to be of the same material as the surrounding features.
Further south, separated from this plaster line by a barrow, a clearly defined yellow almost round lump was uncovered, which, I think, might be a mud brick. Another yellow lump further west did not have clear outlines and the borders of an adjacent lump to the east were also hardly recognizable. These mud bricks have a different size (they are smaller), colour (yellow) and texture (more homogenous, harder) than the dark brown usual mud bricks.
In front of the painted probably in situ plaster on feature 3310 a large plaster lump was found, that has not been removed, yet, in order to better conserve the painted plaster, which is expected to continue.
The homogeneity of the lumps indicates a certain internal coherence. The position of the mud bricks and the layout of the lumps make an interpretation of the evidence as in situ collapse likely.
SO and EUR uncovered a heterogeneous "lump structure" as well, that might be comparable to what we had, in layout and texture.
These excavations of first ca. 10 cm in the northern part of space 342 unfortunately did not clarify the situation of the features 3310 and 3303 (discussed in the diary entry from August 2nd 2012).
CMF started to dig in the north-western corner. The texture was quite loose and homogeneous. She had a lot of finds and some big potsherds, which unfortunately were partly mixed up first with the material I uncovered. After a while CMF realized, that the space she dug had clear outlines, marked by plaster to the south and more compact material of probably also plaster and bricks near the features 3346 and 3311 and to the east at the edge of the buttress F. 5061. We then changed the unit number into 17274 and separated the x-finds, but the pottery and some bones now associated with unit 17272 could not be separated anymore. The flotation sample we took first for unit 17272 was also mixed with material from what later could be identified as pit 17274. But we took another flotation sample for unit 17274. Also, the material for the archive sample taken today came mostly from the pit, so another archive sample has to be taken tomorrow.
In the middle of the space we found a piece of a vessel neck that joint with a piece SO and EUR found. |
