| Entry: | this is a diary for Thursday 15th August
GWN removed parts of the dark grey layer 18377 under the floors in B.98, coming down to a more reddish-brown layer. He had a few nice finds and a nearly whole crushed pot 31191 in this layer.
JMK proceeds at high speed with her section through Sp.446 and found a wall today – under the mortar layer 31146, in section she found a parallel mortar layer and what seems like brick between them. We decided to still cut the top of this wall flat, though, to see it in section.
PAB and ASO removed a lot of soil in 448, finding several nice artefact and going deeper. The fill might start to be more mixed and like the room fill we are used so – so far however very much looks like “garden soil” – moist, dark, without many inclusions or finds.
DSE first finished his walls in northern Building 107, confirming that also wall F.3306 under F.5074 was plastered from the north – so this wall functioned as a wall to an inside room to the north during two wall phases – fascinating.
DSE then moved to Space 310 in B.106, where he will go down in only the southern half of the room to hopefully reach the floor. As usual, the room fill is full of finds (both x and normal).
In Space 454 of Building 106, NMR and TET did some serious clarification of the plaster patch thing – now also called the “pancake stack” – a never ending succession of plaster layers of different sizes, slightly varying colour and not always stacked perfectly, some are hanging over one side. The layer that got most attention today is the orange layer 31181 whose colour seems to derive from firing/burning, further suggested by ashy black under this layer and charcoal inclusions in it. This very layer seems to form a nice circle – maybe we got ourselves a fire installation? However, this would only consists of one player of plaster, no surrounding construction (at least none preserved), and a very clean one – no remains of actual fire left on the plaster. TET checked out the area east and north of the pancake stack and confirmed that it has no connection with any of the walls.
In B.105, TMK and APV removed fill 31184 around the “fallen wall” 18372. Apart from confirming the erosion nature of the layer, they found two halves of one ground stone (grinding tool ?!) ca. 1.6m apart within 31184, in the NW corner and the NE corner – really cool! The odd artefacts in the layer are, my interpretation, evidence of light middening happening at the same time as the erosion – and the two scattered ground stones confirm that this middening was done from a great height and/or with wider gestures.
TSK confirmed that he has sectioned one continuous construction – seemingly a double wall under F.2424 and F.3303, onto which layer F.2424 was put, and seemingly even later F.3303 against F.2424. One seems to see an interface between F.2424 and the wall underneath (no feature number yet, as this has to be confirmed). We do not yet see anything that would help us to tie the buttresses into this story. Also, I cannot yet think of a story that would explain this building sequence. I think it might be best to keep the very nice sections TSK has made and move to another part of the building first to check on the story there.
CMP attacked the wall question in western B.107. Using a guerrilla hit and run technique, poking out parts of the soil that were clearly recognisable as fill, and in doing so uncovered the missing western wall of the second (middle) wall phase – tata! F.3378. While the wall is very clear in most parts, its façade is irregular (not unexpected), and its lower part and the connection with buttress F.3355 unclear. CMP found a lot of large nice sherds and ground stone, fabulous ground stone, as did JHB earlier this season and DLG last year while digging in this corner. Some of these finds seem to be stuck UNDER or INSIDE the wall in the lower part, though. When seeing this, we also noticed that we do not yet see the third (lowermost) wall phase that we see in all three other walls of the building. When trying to get help looking at where the southern wall F.3304 should connect with the new wall F.3378, we noticed that the western part of this wall was also yet unclear, and clearly not exposed in all parts. CMP therefore started to also clarify this wall with the same unit number 31168 (fill stuck to/under wall). |
