| Entry: | Today and yesterday I joined Trench 5 if the West Mound to experience the work and materials in the site, as a complement to my work in the pottery lab.
On 06/08/2013, the day started by a quick tour through different units. In Building 98 I was able to remove a piece of the plastered floor 16977. The plaster feels well compacted and can be removed from below, but I think it is challenging to expose it and clean it from the top. I also observed walls 2424, 3346. Mud bricks here are highly recognizable for the section, and they also have a dark colour when cleaned or freshly excavated, but it would be challenging to identify it from dry soil mixed with chaff on the surface. I would like to have further experience in removing these materials from top soil. The mortar instead is easily recognizable, it is not a soft compacted layer but rough agglomerations of lime and other materials. I also observed the consistency of looser room fill in unit 31114.
Later Building 106 was opened and cleaned together with TET for an initial overview photograph. Brushing the wall F.5058 was very helpful to identify mortar between mud bricks from the top. After opening a record sheet for the new unit 31127, which is the room fill of Building 106, level points and measurements were taken. Work started by removing ca. 7 cm in proximity to the South wall F 2408, towards the North. The unit is a room fill, characterized by fairly loose medium-dark brown soil, with irregular lumps of clay and charcoal. Towards the SW corner there is a larger rectangular lime concentration (30 x 40 cm?), together with medium clay lumps (ca. 15 x 10 cm). It is still unclear whether this is an intentional feature or larger cluster of materials deposited in the fill. Only 20% of the unit was exposed, and the layer was cleaned at the end of the day.
07/08/2013
This is the second day in West Mound, Trench 5, Building 106, together with TET. We continue to expose unit 31127. The initial clay and lime lumps where shown to senoir memebers to make sure they didn't need to be considered a different feature.
Being irregular and not continuous on the section, the removal continued normally and the possibility of a regular plaster floor was dismissed.
More clay and lime was found in other areas of the unit, and they appear to increase towards the South. Some of them however appear to be long and slim rectangular features and they continue along the section, apparently going to the wall. This opens the possibility of having a collapse of materials covering the wall at this level. It is important to observe that although it does not appear as a regular surface, the white areas appear more regularly on the North part of the East section. This could already be a lime feature related to a lower layer of the F. 3314.
Pictures were taken while the layer was still fresh to evidence the changes in colour.
Small quantities of pottery and bone were found. There is 1 cluster of pottery and a greater density of bones was found towards the NE corner and along the edges of the unit. There are also two obsidian tools, and residual quantities of shell and flint.
An archive sample and a flotation sample of ca. 25 litres were taken from the centre of the unit. They were taken continuous to each other. Areas for sampling were taken from the silty, looser soil rather than from the lime and clay levels, because of the mixed nature, providing more information about the different materials present in this unit.
Around 80% of the unit was exposed, but it still needs to be finished. The layer was roughly cleaned at the end of the day. The next step will be to expose better the clay and lime clusters on the South, to then go further down for other 7 or 10 cm. |
