| Entry: | Today I went on excavating this weird structure in the west of building 106 which I might start calling the little "plaster hill", for comprehension’s sake. I started to remove the triangular shaped plaster that seemed the most on top, hoping to also remove the fill and reach the plaster below which is connecting to the surface plaster 31142. However it appeared that we have here also another plaster and fill layer in between. Before this gets to confusing we attributed a new set of unit to each of the visible layers and took an annotated picture of it. 31142 is the plaster that also was found on the room surface. On top of it is a 1mm thick fill, 31151 and a plaster layer 31152. This one is however only partly covering the hill part of 31142; I guess however it is because I didn’t see the separation from the beginning. On top of 31152 is a fill layer 31153 and above it the triangular shaped plaster remain 31154. Towards the west and slightly above it, a thin fill layer is visible (31156), covered by a plaster 31157 that covers the rest of the hill till the western wall F5058. We also have a tiny plaster rest on the north side of the hill, 31155, which I suspect being under unit 31153 but it is still unclear. I spent the afternoon completely removing the plaster layer 31157, until the northern section. It appears to be covering the wall on a few centimeters before sloping down towards east as the rest of the layers do. There was no sign of breaking at the angle, so maybe it was appliqued on a layer that was already inclined towards east, maybe a kind of concave surface or collapsed floor. The maximum thickness was ca. 4cm at the angle. Looking at the fill below it, 31156, it looks very similar to fill 31153 under the removed 31154, is partly connected, and has the same slope angle, so I would suggest joining the units. We already see probable parts of the in-between layer 31152 under both fills. Maybe 31157 and 31154 also represent the same plaster; the connection between them was then however not preserved, due to a little fissure (?) or erosion between them. Tomorrow i will continue removing the plaster layers until we get to layer 31142, which will hopefully tell us more about how surface and wall are connecting, since the above ones are all cut by the byzantine pit and thus not telling us much about a possible floor. |
