| Entry: | Everybody continued working where they started yesterday. Additionally, TET and the workmen started opening and cleaning B.106 to also start excavating there. Things are going nicely, people are getting used to the architecture and recording system incredibly fast – which is great.
NMR continued removing wall F.5074, which is not getting any less complicated. Its easternmost part seems to have been irregularly built, as observed yesterday, in addition to being truncated by pits and a very large rodent-appartment. She also observed that some bricks are tilted towards north, though, indicating a potential slumping event.
It is now also visible that the northern façade of F.5074 was plastered – not the southern façade towards B.107 (which might have been plastered at some point, but this plaster is not preserved), but the northern façade, which is hidden by the parallel wall F.2429. This seems to suggest that F.5074 was the wall of some inside space located to the north at some point – a point in time we cannot connect to the building stratigraphy yet.
DSE finished removing wall F.2425/5050 (the northernmost part of the wall which is inside the area of our designated wall sondage). The lowermost brick row of this wall is sitting directly on the older wall F.3305, without any plaster or filling/connecting layer in between. This observation and small to large irregularities in the surface onto which F.5074 and F.2425/5050 were constructed (i.e. the tops of older walls F.3305 and F.3306) could indicate that the “bricks” of this uppermost wall phase in B.107 were made on the walls. Try putting a dry brick onto an already existing wall – they will not hold together. Only if the new “brick” was wet the two components would be able to stick together.
This is even more strongly suggested by the extremely irregular bases of F.3344 and F.3356 which are currently being removed by CMP and PAB – no normal brick is shaped like this. Even if the bricks were prepared by hand or using some kind of mould, and then directly put onto the wall without any drying period –it would be hard to try and squeeze them into the shapes they were required to fill. This could also explain the varying lengths of the bricks and the fact that some are really really long – long bricks are very vulnerable to cracking during the drying and especially the transport state.
DSE then moved on to removing that big block of wall along the northern section of the trench which is currently all called F.2429 as we were never able to clearly see this wall complex from the top and to decide whether this is one or several walls. He already has the suspicious that there are several walls hidden in that block – we are going to find out more soon.
CMP is removing F.3356 from the top of F.3355. Bricks turn out to be much clearer than we though, which was nice and a good opportunity to take a flotation sample. Again, the “bricks” here have such irregular shapes and sizes, mad to fit exactly on the eroded top of F.3355.
PAB started removing part of F.3344 (part of the planned huge section through western features in B.107). interestingly, there is only fill west of that feature. The wall has irregular outlines, it is slightly thicker in the centre – which however might not be that surprising.
APV and TET (who later moved on to B.106) are taking down F.3346 some more and finding more of that unclear plaster shapes (31116) that we still cannot interpret clearly.
TSK is removing half of buttress F.5063 from the top. He made two attempts at exposing one brick from the top, which turned out to be very complicated. Same suspicion: were the mortar and mud layers applied directly onto the wall? If bricks were made before the construction and then put on top of each other in a dried state, their thicknesses would not vary that much. TSK is basically finding discontinuous layers of “brick” and “mortar” with varying thicknesses. Sometimes, he finds clumps of the “mortar” pressed into the top of one of the “bricks”. That looks very much like wet building to me. I was reminded of some issues we had with the walls of B.106 last year, where however the construction methods seem to have been slightly more orderly.
Why do wet “brick” building? Why not just abandon the mud brick and mortar thing entirely and go for a cob or rammed earth technique?
Maybe I should just start asking “why”. They just did things that seem illogical, counterintuitive or counterproductive to us. But again, I like the “why” question. I want to get into their head. Looking at how they put their walls together, and speculating why they made particular choices is the closest I will ever get to what was going on in their heads. Also, it is refreshing to see that houses were constructed and holding up for decades (and still look quite good after 8000 years) although every modern building engineer would get nightmares looking at how they were built.
TMK started removing the sondage through wall F.2424. He has to get through the upper, very disturbed part first and then we will see more. TMK pointed out that F.2424 is leaning quite bit towards the inside of the building – even where it is abut buttress by F.5063, suggesting that this buttress was built once the wall was already leaning, and maybe because the wall was leaning. I wonder how it feels to live in a building and see a wall slowly coming towards you – probably quite worrying.
GWN, ASO and Caitlin continued removing floor U.16977 (divided into several sampling units) in B.98. They moved towards Sp.341 where the floor seems either better preserved or better made – a nice clear thin white layer on top of greyish fill. This fill starts to interest me now that we see more of it. It is made of differently materials, you see different colours and consistencies. It is still way less heterogeneous than any room fill layer we ever dug. I wonder what event(s) led to the accumulation of this layer.
In the afternoon, we had a colleague with a visual arts project taking photos and video recordings of us in the trench, that was exciting. Some people gave short interviews. |
