| Entry: | Today I continued to remove the brick layers of F5074 (unit 18351), while DSE exposed the top of the wall below F2425 and started to remove the “outer” wall F2429.
Concerning unit 18351, there were still three or four rows of bricks to be removed before reaching the wall F3306 below. The bricks of the first row are quite small and irregular, whereas the bricks of the row below are larger, approx. 50cm. Two long bricks seem to have collapsed towards North-West, however the heavy disturbance due to the large pits and our dear little animals should explain this, as well as the irregular shape of the majority of the bricks. This led us to proceed a bit quicker for the removal, since the bricks are unfortunately quite disturbed anyway. Recognizing the limit between the two walls F 5074 and the F3306 is quite easy on the west side of the unit, since F5074 has a quite typical structure, a vertical alternance between brick and dark-purplish mortar with regular cracks in it. The mortar is however thicker on the wall surface and gets thinner or inexistent the deeper you go in the wall. The eastern part of the unit is on the other hand not so clearly delimited from the lower wall, regarding the quite “messy” corner and the animal damages. This part will be left for tomorrow, when we will hopefully get a better idea of the surface of wall F3306. For now I got down to the surface of F3306 on the west-south part of the unit, while preparing the western profile of our section. On the northern part I left for now a depth of half a brick, so as not to mix with the inter-wall fill that is connecting to the wall F2429. Interestingly the northern surface of F5074 shows a white plaster in the profile, which might indicate an “inner” space north of our wall: wall F2429 would therefore be younger than wall F5074. On the south side, the top level of wall F3306 seems to be on the same level as the buttress F3339/3309. It will be interesting to check to which extent they are really on the same height (possibility of a wooden floor), and how wall and buttress connect to each other. The bricks and the last mortar layer of F5074 were not laying over the buttress.
Goals for tomorrow: Closing heights and mid XY of unit 16842, mid XY of 18351, recording the inter-wall fill as a separate unit and check the connections, remove the east part of 18351, check the connection with the buttress.
Impressions: I start to distinguish the brick/mortar/earth consistency a bit better, but I am still quite worried about creating artificial boundaries to the bricks with my working tools… I also see that concentrating on guessing what is what somehow prevents me from really thinking about what I am doing. I am not taking quite much time to reflect about the bigger picture of what I am excavating while I am excavating it and how it connects to other features. |
