| Entry: | The bins filled with joy.
I have been excavating the bins (F 20002, F 2003, F 2004 and F 2005) in the space 93 of the building 52 for already about a week. The goal was pretty simple to remove the bins and attempt to record the relations between the bins themselves and the walls of the space while doing so What seemed an easy task at the beginning end up being tremendous pain in the neck once I had to run through the original documentation of those bins made upon exposing them in 2005.
What I expected was four bins built from clay abutting each other and the plastered walls (F 2035, F 2008, F 2007 and F 2032) plastered with separate floors/bottoms with underlying floor of the space itself.
What I got was the clearly heterogeneous walls (with grey mortar like layer in their lower part sloping up near the walls of the space and very friable mixed up layer at the very bottom) composed any ay mostly of the animal barrows and conservation team “magic” holding the whole thing together. I also got some sketchy at best documentation that doesn’t seem to be always responding to reality.
There were almost none traces left from the bottoms of the bins recorded as a separate units of brown clay layer covering the whole space between the walls of each bin. What I found was grey layer in the corners of the bin alarmingly similar to the mortar like layer at the lower part of the bins walls (except the bin F2002 that had some brown layer alongside its E and W walls considerably higher than the rest of the bins). All this heavily eroded boundle of joy were lying directly on what seems to be clearly building infill).
I hope that I am wrong but for now I believe that all the bottoms of the bins and the floor of the space lying underneath them (or being on e with them) either eroded away or were removed by excavators that carved the makeup layer (of the space floor as it seems to “form” the lower parts of walls of the bins) in to the shape of the overlying bin walls.
The problem is that I have never encountered the site with more complex and detailed, multidimensional recording and documenting system. However despite the access to various types of data recorded upon exposing the bins and excavating their fill in 2005, in the end as an any other arrogant archaeologist I trust only my own eyes and my very own trowel . I am eager to consider the slip-ups and inaccuracy of my “predecessors” than admit my own inexperience and inability to comprehend the situation .
Just look at the way in which we (the archaeologists) perceive the site, no matter what our colleagues, photos, the documentation says about the relation between two feature or units, we just won’t be one hundred percent sure until we stick our own trowel between them. I don’t know whatever the problem is in the way we record our observations (maybe it in the end it doesn’t reflect the way we really see things) , or in less control over data entry back in the 2005 .
Sorry for the digression, getting back to the subject matter , I had more luck with recording the most probable order in which the bins were erected the one in the NW corner of the space (F2002) was clearly build last after some time after the other ones the wall ( U 11919) were clearly abutting the plaster on the wall (U11919) of the bin (F 2003) an the plaster on the wall (F 2035) The rest of the bins were probably erected earlier all together one after another Starting from the northernmost (F2003) and finishing with the F 2004 and then plastered all together. The walls of the bins were abutting each other directly however with some thin layer of highly organic adhesive layer, that Burcu said to seen on site before, between the walls (U 11922 and U 11960) of the bins F2003 and F2005, the later visibly abutting the former.
The relation between the walls of the space and the bins is most complicated, the upper brick-like material seems to be abutting the walls directly possibly with some thin gray mortar like layer between them while the lover part (the grey mortar-like and the friable infill-like) have thick layer of yellowish plaster (that doesn’t seem to be preserved in higher parts of the space walls, and which large chunks are visible in the infill of the underlying space/building)between them and the walls of the space. The joints between the walls of the bins and the walls of the space were smoothened (a specially in bin F 2003) with considerable amount of gray mortar-like material and altogether (with the walls of the space inside the bins) covered in thin layer of white very friable and poorly preserved (U11921) plaster.
Ok so my (highly subjective) theory goes like this the bins (except F 2002) were erected during the construction the space the infill of the underlying building was covered in grey thick make up layer up to the level of previous building/faze plaster (the yellowish one) than the actual walls of the bins (F2003, F2005 and F 2004) were constructed (from light orange clay) and the whole space together with the bins were covered in a layer of the (whitish) plaster. After some time the last bin (F2002) were added due to a storage space shortage. Than the whole thing went down with the fire (literally). And after some more time roughly 9 thousand years either my predecessors went a little overboard while excavating the rich and fascinating content of the bins or the floor of the bins and the space eroded away (living traces of mattock along the wall of the bin F2002). |
