| Entry: | GWN worked further in his sondage. After taking out floor 18376, we saw two rectangles in the cut: a red rectangle in the west, and a dark grey rectangle in the east. Both seemed to be building material; they were rather homogeneous and we have seen both colours at the features around the trench. After staring at it for a while, we decided that the grey material probably was fill next to a red wall, as it had some larger inclusions (bone, pottery), and as the red seemed to form a corner with another red patch that was just visible in front of F.3333 and might be another red construction feature. GWN took out the grey fill (18389) and after 3-5cm came down to exactly the same red material of the patch next to it. By that point everything visible in the sondage was homogeneous red mud brick, into which apparently somebody had cut a rectangle, which was then filled with 18389. At this point, we decided to stop excavating the sondage, so not to destroy something that we cannot understand in this small area. This was further confirmed by the observation that the floor 18376 and the clay ball cluster 18369 run under the walls F.3333 and F.5057, so we definitely are in another construction phase.
JHB took out the infill of wall niche 15337, including the large mortar stone he found here, which also seems to have some pigment at its sides. Afterwards, the niche looked nice and rectangular-cubic, plastered at the bottom; the side were also plastered, but a lot of this came off. At the back, he stopped at a vertical layer of phytoliths, which seemed to indicate the end of the fill and the beginning of mud brick behind it. Towards the end of the day, he scraped again, however, and seemed to see the plastered back of the trench one further centimetre in. Will be checked tomorrow. In the afternoon, both JHB and GWN worked on removing the remaining brick of F.2428 in the wall sondage of the northwest corner of B.98.
KTX worked further on exposing layer 16999, which did not become clearer after we saw some more of it. We now seem to have more questions than answers, but this will be a good starting point for next year. The layer looks different under F.5058 than it looks like under F.2427 and under the buttresses F.3301 and F.3302. We discussed whether the layer is made from different material, with more clay and less plaster, or whether it is just thinner and therefore looks different. In several parts the layer is so thin that it came off during cleaning and the red brick of F.3312 showed underneath. Highly unclear is what happens to 16999 and the last brick of F.5058 against F.2424; it looks nearly like the wall and layer were running under F.2424, but I cannot imagine scenario explaining how this would have happened – unless we assume a highly irregular western face of F.5058, which does not seem to have been the case further up. We did not scrape away all the unclear material in this area, as our sondage is too small to see clearly the relations of the walls – something else for next year. Instead, KTX started to take out the remaining southern part of buttress F.3301 with the aim to clarify whether 16999 connects to the plastered surface 16932 found last year. First, he took out the plaster layer 18387 which is only preserved/present in the very corner of F.3301 and F.5058, applied over 16932 and running up the walls.
TET with PTW finished removing room fill 18365 in Space 345. This fill might be laying on a surface containing some limy material, which is partially exposed. We decided not to work further on exposing the potential surface this year, as it is better protected by the fill remaining on top of it. Instead, TET scraped back (18390) the eastern wall F.5075 of the space to check PFB’s hypothesis that this is not a continuous wall, but only a buttress, so that Space 345 and Space 447 are in fact linked and belong to one large building. TET removed the fragile wall plaster and then cut the wall face straight; afterwards we could observe reddish-brown brick with thinner and bright grey mortar lines. Some part of the wall seem unusual, filled with different materials, though. Some patches look like plaster – we might have a similar case as with the plugging plaster observed in Building 106.
CMF finished working on her wall F.3349 without having removed that much of it; she then moved down into Building 105 to help EUR with cleaning the collapse in sondage 18370. They cleaned, photographed and removed several layers of the brick and mortar and plaster lumps. After seeing more of this layer, the lumps are not dense enough, and too mixed with other kinds of fill, to be a collapse layer in situ. EUR pointed out that similar layers, containing many lumps of building material, were found in many parts of the fill of B.105. There definitely are several large pieces that seem to originate from actual walls, e.g. 18372; we never had collapse pieces like this, and we will try to see more of them tomorrow.
DLG worked further on the corner of walls F.2424 and F.5051, uncovering several unusual features of the brickwork. In one layer, a long brick of F.5051 forms the corner of both walls; apparently F.2424 was built at the same time from the other (southern) side, and when they tried to join walls on this level they had a gap of the size of about half a brick. Instead of filling it with brick material, they put in a large and thick patch of mortar. Most unusual is the internal plastering on the walls. For one, it really seems to run down along the wall beyond the level where F.3303 and F.3310 are put against F.2424 and F.5051. Also, both walls seem to thicken a bit at the base; some bricks protrude from the regular wall faces. Plaster covered all bricks, but also went on top and behind one of the protruding bricks; I have no idea what to make of this right now. |
