| Entry: | I switched to reopening the wall (F 2424) next to the buttress (F 5063) in order to spread out the work more evenly and be done before building 106 to the east will be reopened. We had not been given exact schedules before but Peter wished I would finish the feature before the end of the Ramadan on Wednesday (7 August), after which we will work in the labs instead of the trenches until next Sunday. To get the work done, I need to take a much rougher approach. It will impact the resolution of the work I’m doing, but the upper levels are pretty ravaged already.
As always, fieldwork is much about finding a balance between time and resolution according to the priorities and questions we are pursuing. I suppose that the occupants of the mound also were also balancing between modifying, repairing, starting and abandoning buildings. Currently it seems that the bricks on my wall were sloping downwards to the west, into building 105. If that was the case, the buttress 5063 may be a later addition, built to prevent further collapse. The buttresses were new solutions to old problems that people on the east mound had been encountering. In a cramped environment with little space for extensive modification or establishment of new buildings, extending the use life of the building through buttressing it would have been a logical step. However, could it be possible that the loping of the walls has happened after occupation?
This hypothesis may be strengthened if there is evidence of similar preventive buttressing in the other buildings. If there isn’t, it’s even more interesting how the buttresses seem to be an ongoing feature despite the variations in building materials. Along with the lack of wall paintings, the buttresses apparently were some of the most significant and visible differences to the east mound buildings. Nevertheless, all these changes seem to have ben internal to the houses rather than making statements of difference on the exteriors of the houses. This could be just an artifact of preservation and research focus, but seems to go rather well with the people’s obsession with house living even as the spaces got increasingly cramped.
It’s nice experimenting with ideas, no matter how ridiculous they’ll sound a fewdays or weeks from now. If the ideas change, maybe that'll be a sign of us having learnt at least something new. |
